Re: Types of numerals

caeruleancentaur wrote:
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@E...> wrote:
>
>
>>If you don't like pennies, or nickles, or whatever, just leave
>>them at the register.  I've never understood the hostility towards
>>pennies, though.  Like any other denomination of coin, if you use
>>them, they're not a problem.
>
>
>>From our local newspaper [January 1-7, 2006]: "Edmond Knowles of
> Flomaton [Alabama] (pop. 1,588) set a world record when he cashed in
> his 38-year penny collection last June [2005].  The pennies, stored in
> four 55-gallon and three 20-gallon barrels, yielded $13,084.59, the
> largest personal penny cash-in ever recorded."
>
> That's 1,308,459 pennies!!
:-)  And another good reason for keeping pennies - easy way to save up
large sums of money!

Anyways, I never have more than 4 pennies in my wallet at any given
time, because I use them.  Like, if something were priced, say, $7.51,
and I had a $10 bill and, say, a couple dimes and a penny, I'll pay
$10.01, to minimize my change.  (Admittedly, I'm semi-OCD on that issue
... I've been known to give a cashier $23.01 for a $7.51 purchase -
$15.50 in change, the most compact change I could come up with with what
I had on me)

Carsten Becker wrote:
 > As for getting rid of one and two pence pieces, I wouldn't
 > mind doing that here in the Euro zone as well. It's so
 > annoying that when buying something at a drug store, you
 > will ALWAYS get one cent change because *all* of their
 > prices are X.99 EUR. And then you've got half a dozen
 > pennies in your wallet and cannot get rid of them because
 > hardly anybody accepts them.

Even in increments of one or two?  That surprises me!  If they give them
out, why wouldn't they accept them?  Seems counterproductive to me.
You'd run out of pennies in your till pretty damn fast.

One really has to wonder what the EU was thinking setting the Euro at a
value that made .01 so nearly worthless.  They should've set it at about
5 times that value, so that a 1-cent piece would've been more worthwhile.

 > The same goes for 2 cent
 > pieces. I also wouldn't mind to introduce a 5 Euro coin
 > because you very often get back a 5 Euro bill and the rest
 > in cash[1]

Interestingly, around here, "cash" is often used to mean paper money
exclusively.

Japan's highest coin is the 500-yen, which is roughly 5 Euro.

A hundred years ago, the US's smallest bill was $1, and today it's still
$1, even though the dollar's value was about 20 times higher then.  So,
even the half-dollar back then was worth about $10 today!

 > [1] Open wallet, take change, put in bill, turn wallet, open
 > pocket for coins, put in coins, close pocket, close wallet.

A lot of Americans just put their coins in their pocket.  I prefer
keeping it in my wallet, as its more efficient, but lately I've been
looking for a new, nicer, wallet, and you just can't find men's wallets
with a coin-pocket.  Very annoying.

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