coins and currency (was: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals)

I don't post on here much, but as a coin collector I have to have at
least _one_ post on this thread.

Nomad of Norad David C. Hall wrote:

> Hi Nik (Nik Taylor), in <43BD5154.9030405@...> on Jan 5 you wrote:
>
>
>>caeruleancentaur wrote:
>>
>>>With our luck they'll always round up!!  The U.S. is no longer
>>>printing the $2 bill.
>>
>>Actually, we are.  Not every year, but $2 are still printed whenever the
>>Federal Reserve's stock gets low.  The most recent printing was in 2003
>>and 2004.
>>
>>Personally, I'd like to see coins of $1, $2, and $5.  Maybe even $10.
>
>
> Well, there is a dollar coin.  Actually, there have been two different
> ones in the last decade or two: the Susan B Anthony dollar coin, which
> flopped because it was physically the same size as a quarter (and thus
> couldn't be differintiated easily by feel when fumbling about for change
> in ones pocket), and then its recent replacement, the Sakajuia (sp?)
> dollar, which is exactly the same size as the Susan B Anthony!
>
> There used to be a dollar coin that was way bigger.  Seems to me it was
> the Kennedy dollar.  Seems to me there also used to be a half-dollar
> coin or some such thing...
>
>
As Roger Mills said, the last large-size silver dollar was the
Eisenhower dollar, and before that the Peace dollar, my personal
favorite. Before *that* was the Morgan dollar that everyone else likes.
Those are the "Old West" silver dollars. Today's dollar coins
(small-size) are the Anthony and Sacagawea dollars, and starting next
year, Presidential dollars.

The half dollar (once again, like Roger said) has Kennedy on it. It was
Ben Franklin until the assassination.

And of course, no current US coin has any silver in it, except bullion
coins and special "proof" coins that the Mint sells to collectors.

Personally, I would like to see $5, $10, and even $20 coins. A $10 coin
would probably be called an "eagle", matching the old term for gold
coins of that denomination. The $5 and $20 coins would be "half eagles"
and "double eagles" respectively. The largest US coin was a $50
commemorative, and it has been called a "half union", so there's the
word for $100 coins, too. :)

>>>There was one in the collection plate a few
>>>weeks ago that I took for a souvenir.  Yes, I put two $1's in for
>>>it!!  :-)>
>>
>>You can pick them up at any bank.  I do that every so often, and then
>>spend them.  Unfortunately, they're rarely given out in change, and
>>thus, probably end up right back at the bank the day after I spend them.
>
>
> There's a guy who regularly gets whole batches of $2 bills at the bank,
> just so he can hand them out as change to people and see their reaction.
> He actually got arrested because some clueless-clown cashier thought they
> were funny-money.  ("There's no such THING as a two dollar bill!  And look
> at this!  They've all got similar serial numbers!  GOTTA be a fake...!")
>
I actually have 14 $2 bills in my wallet right now, not to mention 5 $1
coins and 5 half-dollars in the car. I have yet to find a bank around
here that can get _rolls_ of halves, though. One guy on the coin
collecting newsgroup actually found a French *gold* coin in a roll,
hence my reason for searching. :)

[Pasting from other messages]
Nik Taylor wrote:
> John Vertical wrote:
>
>> I dunno about hostility, but I can understand the annoyance.
>> Imagine if you had one-thousandth coins instead; would you agree
>> that minting those would be a complete waste of material and
>> effort? You'd need dozens before you could spend them on anything.
>> Now, with pennies, the only difference is that you'll need a ten
>> times smaller pile before they're worth anything. A single penny is
>> still essentially government-produced scrap metal by itself...
>> except maybe to little children, who might be happy to find one on
>> the ground and be able to go buy one gummibear.
>
>
> I quite agree that eventually we will have to abandon the penny, I
> just don't think we're quite there yet.  It certainly wouldn't be a
> problem if we did drop them, I just don't think it's necessary.  And
> they're still useful for charities, which often have boxes by sales
> registers that people can drop change in.  Pennies provide a
> surprisingly high percentage of the money they take in.  I can't
> remember the figure right now, but I believe it was almost 20%.
>
> A mil coin ($.001) would almost certainly be impossible to produce
> today for less than $.001, but they did exist in earlier times, used
> primarily for sales tax purposes, at a time when the dollar's
> purchasing power was less than 10 times its present value, making
> those coins less valuable than current pennies.
>
The problem with pennies (or cents, as pedantic numismatists say) is
that they cost *more* to produce than they are worth. Seriously. One
penny costs on average something like 1.25 cents to actually mint. And
the annual mintage is somewhere in the billions. Copper pennies (minted
through 1982, when the Mint switched to zinc) are actually worth less as
coins than as metal.

As for sub-cent coins, the US minted a half-cent until right before the
Civil War (1857, I think), and the British had farthings well into the
20th century. American banknotes go all the way down to 3 cents, the
so-called "fractional currency" issued during the Civil War because of a
shortage of metal for coinage. Think how little one of *those* would buy
now, and you have the reason why some people want to get rid of the $1 bill.

Now on to more pressing matters, namely the ObConlang portion of this
post...

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> Have y'all designed currency systems for your cultures?
>
Suvile (actually, the Suzhoni, since currency is not specific to the
Suvile language) has a currency system based on the number 60.

There are three base units of currency:

* the gold |bagil| (translated as "dollar")
* the silver |sajon| (translated as "dime")
* the copper or base-metal |melev| (translated as "cent")

Each of these has its own set of denominations:

Gold: 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2 bagil
Silver: 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 5 sajon
Copper: 1/2, 1, 2, 5 melev

Since the weight of the "1" coins is approximately 1/10 troy oz., these
are worth, at prices of $540/oz gold, $9/oz silver, and $0.15/oz copper:

bagil: 2b=$108, 1b=$54, 1/2b=$27, 1/4b=$13.50
sajon: 5s=$4.50, 2s=$1.80, 1s=$0.90, 1/2s=$0.45, 1/4s=$0.225
melev: 5m=7.5 cents 2m=3 ct., 1m=1.5 ct., 1/2m=0.75 ct.

Yes I have thought about this too much, and, yes, I do want to make real
Suzhoni coins, or at least the copper ones. The reverse (tails side)
would have the 12-pointed star that can be seen in the IdzonWiki logo,
and the obverse (heads), I'm not sure yet.

--
Michael Potter
Idzon Conworld (now Wikified!): http://idzon.potterpcs.net

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