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Interesting fact: I once got foreign currency for a trip overseas. After I got back, I tried depositing what's left back into my bank account; the teller said they would take the paper currency, but would not take the coins. So I still have the coins to this day, or I should say, my daughter does now, as part of her world coin collection.
Nobody is ever interested in exchanging foreign coins for local currency - not the banks and not the little moneychanger booths in shopping centres. Not even for coins that have relatively high face value, like Canadian $1 and $2 coins, British £1 and £2, EU 1 and 2 euro coins, Japanese 100 and 500 yen, or Australian $2 coins. With a very few exceptions, nobody outside the country of issue wants to actually use as money the coins of that country, and it's simply not economically viable to repatriate large quantities of coins back to wherever they came from. The only people who will give you any kind of money in exchange for foreign coins are coin dealers and scrap metal merchants, and neither of those are likely to pay "full face value equivalent".
This is why international airports in most Western countries usually have big donation buckets where travellers can dump unwanted foreign coins - these coins get donated to local charities, who sell them (to local coin dealers), raising funds to support their charity work.
I know whenever I or my family travel overseas, there's always a stockpile of coins sitting around the house from previous visits (and other sources), which we take with us. I have a couple of bags of US and Canadian coins I plan on taking with me when I go to North America next month. But most tourists don't want to be lumbered with bags of coins before they go.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 03/06/2023 4:18 pm
