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Replies: 32 / Views: 5,097 |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
Switzerland and Japan both have circulating coins worth more than $5 USD. The UK, Eurozone (on a good day), Tunisia, Israel and more have circulating coins worth more than $3 USD. As for greater than $0.25 USD... almost every country in the world has more valuable circulating coins. Canada, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, even Panama uses their equivalent of the dollar coin. Complain as much as you like, the United States is behind the times.
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Valued Member
United States
301 Posts |
Sadly with everything done electronically, I dont ever see higher valued coins being issued. If anything, we will eventually do away with most coins. (Penny, 1/2 Dollar, and Dollar) While I love collecting coins, even some modern ones, it dosent make sense when the cost of production outweighs the monetary value. So save all you can now!
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Valued Member
United States
317 Posts |
Quote: Switzerland and Japan both have circulating coins worth more than $5 USD. The 500 Yen coin is thick and heavy compared to US coins and annoying to carry around and I wouldn't be surprised if that coin is heavily counterfeited.
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
Are we talking about the same coin? It's about SBA-sized. As for counterfeiting, it's as good as it gets (slanted reeding, lateral image, micro-printing) with security - the CHF5 coin is even better because of its excuse edge lettering. I would not be surprised if the U.S. Mint managed to come up with even better security features, especially in the bimetallic and polygonal form.
Slightly large coins also offer more space for the designs, which I think we would all appreciate. The current presidential lineup is boring and this is also an opportunity for change and excitement.
Also, how much harm is it to put coins in your pocket? Do they chafe? Do you walk off-balance? Try carrying a dozen quarters one day and 6 halves the next (and not many circulating coins today exceed the size of the American half), see if there's any noticeable difference between the two. The "difficult to carry" argument has been thoroughly discredited in any country where the coins come bigger than U.S. quarters.
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Valued Member
United States
317 Posts |
Its not the size of a SBA nor is it as large as a Kennedy but its very thick. And it was annoying carry around in Japan with limited pockets/no pockets in the summer.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
I think the main issue is that 90% of Americans can't be bothered to make a trip to the coin jar to get change before they head out shopping. Sure, it's not much of a hassle to carry around a few coins, but why bother getting those coins if they aren't already in your pocket? It's much easier to just break a $100 or $20 on your first transaction and use that change until you change pants.
Also a few other things to consider from a former cashier:
1. Bills are difficult to swipe from a cash till without being caught on camera. A little sleight of hand can remove a coin without being noticed. At my old work, cashiers would "borrow" quarters to get a snack from the vending machine all the time. My old work would give cashiers a +/- $10 per day; $30 per week window of error before a write-up would be issued.
2. Going off of the above, I can't tell you how many times I had a customer drop a quarter and lose it under lord knows where. Standard procedure was to just give them another one if you saw it was an accident. Imagine if you learned how to drop a $10 coin in a way that you could control where it rolled so another person could pick it up before the cashier found it.
3. Most cashiers don't know the security features of American paper money. We were instructed to only check $50 and $100. As previously stated, even if state-of-the art anti-counterfeiting measures were used on these coins, most simply wouldn't check them. As an example, one of my friends asked me to take a look at his coin collection several years ago to see if there was anything valuable. He had 3 1980-something British pound coins--of those, two were counterfeit. He had no idea and didn't think to check that the edge lettering was literally scratched in by hand.
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
837 Posts |
Quote:The 500 Yen coin is thick and heavy compared to US coins and annoying to carry around  I just checked , the 500 Yen coin is 7.1g , 26.5mm in diameter which makes it lighter than than a British 2 pence  or the clad half dollar  and slightly less diameter than the British 2 pound coin .....so the 500 Yen doesn't sound too heavy 
Edited by DaytR 04/21/2014 4:06 pm
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Valued Member
United States
317 Posts |
I was wrong, you people are right. I grabbed a 500 yen coin and placed it over an SBA and they are nearly identical in size. I just had a bad experience with the coins while over there I guess. I just remember everything needing 100 or 500 yen coins and it was annoying, but whatever.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
Quote: I just remember everything needing 100 or 500 yen coins and it was annoying, but whatever. If everything was needing a 500 yen coin they should have been leaving your pockets as fast as they were entering them. you should probably never have had a reason to have more than one of them on you.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
613 Posts |
I'm all for high value coins
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Valued Member
United States
381 Posts |
The problem is with the cash drawers in every shop! Unless you get ride of the penny's and the nickels you cant add the coin
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
And just think of all the fun counterfeiters would have making a coin that is difficult to figure out if real or not. They are flooding the World with fake Silver Dollars so imagine fake $5, $10 or more coins. However, with inflation the way it is, the $5 coin would be good for gun ball machines soon. 
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1700 Posts |
$5 and $10 would encounter the counterfeit problem worse than anything else.
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Moderator
 United States
188770 Posts |
Quote: The problem is with the cash drawers in every shop! Unless you get ride of the penny's and the nickels you cant add the coin I like where this is going.  Still not going to happen though. 
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4869 Posts |
I don't think there should be a $5 or $10 coin. Can't even get dollar coins to circulate. If there were, metal prices would probably rise because of them and therefore making the cent and nickel even more to produce. I agree with having coins up to $2 but no more than that.
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Replies: 32 / Views: 5,097 |