5 ms·

I recently moved to the US and I hate its coins. To the point that I consider all of them unusable. When I get home, I leave all the coins that I received as ch

by soneca 7y ago

I recently moved to the US and I hate its coins. To the point that I consider all of them unusable. When I get home, I leave all the coins that I received as change on a plate by the door, hoping someday I will bring all of them at once somewhere to change for bills (I believe there are machines that do this). My complaints: i) They do not have numbers on them!! You have to read words to know the value ii) To make point i) worse, they have nicknames printed on some of the coins!! They do not write "ten cents", it is "one dime". They do not write "twenty-five cents", they write "quarter dollar" (even the unit here changes) iii) To make points i) and ii) worse, there is no default place where the value is written. $0.01 is a horizontal banner. $0.10 and $0.25 are round-based by the edge of the coin. $0.05 is round-based, but not by the edge of the coin, just slightly above another text that is by the edge. iv) The coins do not obey a coherent progression of value and size. From smallest to largest the coins are: $0.10 < $0.01 < $0.05 < $0.25 v) The colors are all the same, except for the $0.01 coin. So when you have a bunch of coins, you have to properly spread them in your hand to be able to compare their sizes (which is hard when the items are circles), account that there is no size-value correlation, and if you do not remember by size; you have to read a tiny sentence, lost in the middle of several other sentences, with no typographic differentiation of where they are.

jjeaff 7y ago
I have this problem any time I go to another country. Many times they don't even print them in a language I can read! I'm kidding of course. Because usually, even if I'm only in a place for a week or two, I'll have it figured out and it's not a problem. I mean, there are only really 4 options. 1, 5, 10, and 25 cents. And I can't remember the last time I used change to buy something.
- iamnotacrook 7y ago
  "I mean, there are only really 4 options. 1, 5, 10, and 25 cents." Really 5 - I got a dollar coin. Apparently they're rare although I didn't handle a lot of cash and I got one on the second or third day I was there so...not that rare then. I used my UK contactless card. It was funny because in a lot of places they'd never seen one and kept telling me to insert or even swipe it - something I've not done for years in the UK. When the tap didn't work once it was amusing handing the card to the cashier and watching him repeatedly swipe the card and then enter the long card number, expiry date etc like it was a cardholder-not-present transaction!
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    The tap cards are using the same tech as apple and Google pay. So they have really started showing up everywhere all the sudden. I haven't seen a dollar coin in years. Though maybe because I just don't pay in cash much anywhere.
human20190310 7y ago
Americans develop a "feel" for this, to the point where one can drop a handful of coins on the ground and know the total value just by the sound it makes.
keiferski 7y ago
The vast majority of Americans have never read a coin to determine its value. They are all easily distinguishable by size and touch and your average American could identify them 100% of the time while blindfolded. Unfortunately the paper money isn’t similarly touch-friendly.
dghf 7y ago
> ii) To make point i) worse, they have nicknames printed on some of the coins!! They do not write "ten cents", it is "one dime". They do not write "twenty-five cents", they write "quarter dollar" (even the unit here changes) Those aren't nicknames. They are the official names of the coins as laid down in the Coinage Act of 1792 (though "dime" was originally spelled "disme") and its successors. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Large/Volume_1/2nd_Congress/1st_Session/Chapter_16 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Lar...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
philwelch 7y ago
The quickest way to recognize US coins is to recognize which of our four greatest presidents[1] is displayed on the coin: George Washington on the quarter (25 cents), Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the dime (10 cents), Thomas Jefferson on the nickel (5 cents), and Abraham Lincoln on the penny (1 cent). The only recent significant change to the front design is that Jefferson is looking at you on the newer nickels, rather than to the side as he did previously. This is a completely arbitrary system, but American schoolchildren learn it very early on and memorize it, and it remains valid for the entire rest of their lives. [1] You may recall that the faces of our four greatest presidents are also engraved on Mount Rushmore, except instead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt is on the mountain. This is because Mount Rushmore was carved during the administration of FDR, and he had not yet had the opportunity to displace his cousin within the top four. Also, neither ranking is especially unanimous among historians or the public, but it is relatively close to the consensus.

by soneca 7y ago

jjeaff 7y ago

I have this problem any time I go to another country. Many times they don't even print them in a language I can read! I'm kidding of course. Because usually, even if I'm only in a place for a week or two, I'll have it figured out and it's not a problem. I mean, there are only really 4 options. 1, 5, 10, and 25 cents. And I can't remember the last time I used change to buy something.

iamnotacrook 7y ago
"I mean, there are only really 4 options. 1, 5, 10, and 25 cents." Really 5 - I got a dollar coin. Apparently they're rare although I didn't handle a lot of cash and I got one on the second or third day I was there so...not that rare then. I used my UK contactless card. It was funny because in a lot of places they'd never seen one and kept telling me to insert or even swipe it - something I've not done for years in the UK. When the tap didn't work once it was amusing handing the card to the cashier and watching him repeatedly swipe the card and then enter the long card number, expiry date etc like it was a cardholder-not-present transaction!
- jjeaff 7y ago
  The tap cards are using the same tech as apple and Google pay. So they have really started showing up everywhere all the sudden. I haven't seen a dollar coin in years. Though maybe because I just don't pay in cash much anywhere.

human20190310 7y ago

Americans develop a "feel" for this, to the point where one can drop a handful of coins on the ground and know the total value just by the sound it makes.

keiferski 7y ago

The vast majority of Americans have never read a coin to determine its value. They are all easily distinguishable by size and touch and your average American could identify them 100% of the time while blindfolded. Unfortunately the paper money isn’t similarly touch-friendly.

dghf 7y ago

> ii) To make point i) worse, they have nicknames printed on some of the coins!! They do not write "ten cents", it is "one dime". They do not write "twenty-five cents", they write "quarter dollar" (even the unit here changes) Those aren't nicknames. They are the official names of the coins as laid down in the Coinage Act of 1792 (though "dime" was originally spelled "disme") and its successors. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Large/Volume_1/2nd_Congress/1st_Session/Chapter_16 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Lar...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

philwelch 7y ago

The quickest way to recognize US coins is to recognize which of our four greatest presidents[1] is displayed on the coin: George Washington on the quarter (25 cents), Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the dime (10 cents), Thomas Jefferson on the nickel (5 cents), and Abraham Lincoln on the penny (1 cent). The only recent significant change to the front design is that Jefferson is looking at you on the newer nickels, rather than to the side as he did previously. This is a completely arbitrary system, but American schoolchildren learn it very early on and memorize it, and it remains valid for the entire rest of their lives. [1] You may recall that the faces of our four greatest presidents are also engraved on Mount Rushmore, except instead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt is on the mountain. This is because Mount Rushmore was carved during the administration of FDR, and he had not yet had the opportunity to displace his cousin within the top four. Also, neither ranking is especially unanimous among historians or the public, but it is relatively close to the consensus.