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Coin washer keeps Westin St. Francis' change shiny (2010)
- gorkish 7y agoHe might be one of the only professional money-washers left at a private business, but some of the people who rank very highly on the currency tracking site www.wheresgeorge.com are known to wash, dry, and iron hundreds to thousands of paper banknotes every day. Wattsburg Gary, one of the sites top ranked users attributes his high "hit rate" to this practice which is about as straightforward as it sounds. He runs the money through a regular washer and dryer, then irons it, puts his wheresgeorge stamp on it, then sends it on its way.
- dan-robertson 7y agoSounds like money laundering but I guess it’s legal in his case.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoDefacing US currency isn't legal.
- LyndsySimon 7y agoModification isn't "defacement", though.
- brewdad 7y agoModification that doesn't alter the denomination or attempt to decieve is legal. A crucial difference.
- raverbashing 7y agoI'd argue cleaning notes and coins isn't even "modification" it's just that, cleaning Modification would be writing with a ball-point pen on it.
- daveslash 7y agoMy wife recently got me a colored & decorated $2 bill. It's decorated with Chinese graphics to celebrate the year of the tiger. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91hUwSD3ImL._AC_SX679_.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91hUwSD3ImL... I was very surprised to learn that this is not only legal, but apparently is still considered legal tender. They're produced by a company called "The Merrick Mint" - which is not actually a mint, just a company with "mint" in the name. They specialize in taking real U.S. currently and decorating/coloring it. https://www.merrickmint.com/ https://www.merrickmint.com/
- gorkish 7y agoWhile wheresgeorge hasn't been entirely "cleared," they have been directly investigated by the secret service and the only fallout was that they were prohibited from selling stamps directly. It is not permitted to advertise on currency, and they considered this to be promoting the practice. Individuals marking their own bills for the purpose of tracking them however was considered a separate and fully permissible action. The legal standard for defacing or destroying requires that the banknote be made unfit for circulation -- though that is about as clear as mud, it has been a pretty tall standard to meet.
- asdf21 7y agoAs a rare coin collector, washed pieces are worth far, far, less.. cleaning coins makes them shiny but also wears off important details. I can't help but be slightly mortified by the mass-cleaning of coins.. >Along with the coins, the burnisher is filled with water, bird shot to knock the dirt off, and a healthy pour of 20 Mule Team Borax soap. After three hours of swishing the coins around, Holsen uses a metal ice scoop to pour the loot into a perforated roast pan that sifts out the bird shot. Argh, the horror!! I really hope no rare coins have passed through this.
- tecleandor 7y agoAh, but that makes your already collected coins more valuable
- shaneprrlt 7y agoLol, there's always a silver lining. :)
- abeppu 7y agoOnly true before 1965, at which point linings were switched to be copper-nickel alloys.
- staticautomatic 7y agoWhy not just use a mild acid instead of an abrasive? I remember being delighted as a kid that ketchup made pennies shiny!
- Symbiote 7y agoHow many pay with cash at a hotel? I'd expect it to be very low — large bills, often paid for by a company credit card or in advance online.
- Johnny555 7y agoFor the hotel bill itself, I agree that most people will pay via credit card, but I've seen plenty of people paying cash for incidentals at the front desk (snacks, drinks, etc) as well as at the hotel restaurant/bar.
- samstave 7y agoThere are plenty of times people who are traveling do not want a digital record of their payments for things such as alcohol or "food for two"
- teddyh 7y agoWhy would anyone want a digital record of any of their payments? By default? EDIT: I should have clarified that I was thinking of a digital record in someone else’s possession. Having a record of your own transactions yourself could certainly be useful.
- Johnny555 7y agoOne reason is to load it into their employers expense system for reimbursement... My company credit card expenses automatically show up in our expense system for easier expense reporting. Another reason is so I can audit the charges -- if my credit card had an option for "Don't track individual purchases", I wouldn't use it since I want to look at the charges at the end of the month and make sure they were mine.
- jefftk 7y agoGoing even farther, I'd love it if full receipts passed through the credit card system. Yes, my credit card company would mine the data, but replacing "$20 at FOOCORP on 11/23" with "$20 at FOOCORP on 11/23 <click for receipt>" would be well worth it to me. (I wrote up something advocating this in https://www.jefftk.com/p/attach-receipts-to-credit-card-transactions https://www.jefftk.com/p/attach-receipts-to-credit-card-tran...)
- Johnny555 7y agoAlong with the coins, the burnisher is filled with water, bird shot to knock the dirt off, and a healthy pour of 20 Mule Team Borax soap Isn't bird shot typically made from lead? Are they coating the coins with lead?
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- ISL 7y agoIt can also be steel, which is apt to work better in this context. Lead shot might actually mark up the coins.
- mikeyouse 7y agoIn California, lead shot was a contributor to the near extinction of the California Condor so it’s effectively banned for hunting purposes. You can basically just find steel now. https://www.kqed.org/science/1944241/lead-ammunition-is-now-banned-for-hunting-wildlife-in-california https://www.kqed.org/science/1944241/lead-ammunition-is-now-...
- Johnny555 7y agoIt may be banned in certain areas but lead shot is still sold: https://www.cabelas.com/category/104567580.uts?CQ_view=list&CQ_ztype=GNU&CQ_ref=~type-Lead https://www.cabelas.com/category/104567580.uts?CQ_view=list&... https://www.amazon.com/Magnum-Lead-Shot-2-25-Pound/dp/B001QV1A0Q https://www.amazon.com/Magnum-Lead-Shot-2-25-Pound/dp/B001QV... And some bans have been reversed: New U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday issued an order overturning an Obama administration ban on the controversial use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle used on federal lands and waters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-zinke/new-interior-head-lifts-lead-ammunition-ban-in-nod-to-hunters-idUSKBN16930Z https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-zinke/new-in... But even if there were a ban, since this hotel has been doing this since the 1930's, they could still have a few hundred pound bags of real lead shot in the basement that they're using for this.
- csense 7y agoI guess you could say this hotel's definitely laundering money :)
- reljac 7y agoSeason 7 of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel showed this in action (I still enjoy reruns of Dirty Jobs) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dirty_Jobs_episodes#Season_7_(2011%E2%80%9312) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dirty_Jobs_episodes#...
- thordenmark 7y agoI love Dirty Jobs. I don't understand the criticisms of the show.
- markdown 7y agoWhat criticisms?
- scrollaway 7y agoMike Rowe, the guy from Dirty Jobs, got involved with some weird online university that promotes a lot of conspiratorial crap / climate change denial / things like that, and used his fame to promote that stuff. You can imagine some people aren't happy about it. But I definitely loved the series.
- russellbeattie 7y agoHere's some video - not sure if it's that episode or something different. https://youtu.be/9IqHCVRbidA https://youtu.be/9IqHCVRbidA
- sevencolors 7y agoha! Video title is MONEY LAUNDERING AT THE WESTIN ST. FRANCIS
- reljac 7y agoThat video isn't the Dirty Jobs video but it does show the same room and process (just without all of the Dirty Jobs humorous commentary)
- solotronics 7y agoChange doesn't make sense today. Comparing the value of a penny in 1900 it would be worth $0.31 today. Therefore we should get rid of pennies, nickles, and dimes. It is a huge waste of human time to count these small denominations out. They should round up to the nearest $0.25 https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1900?amount=0.01 https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1900?amount=0.01
- chaostheory 7y agoWith more and more things going digital everywhere, this argument gets less and less important over time
- sethammons 7y agoEach item rounds up. If you shop for food at the dollar-ish store, $1.01 now goes to $1.25. A 14 to 24% price increase that will disproportionately affect lower socioeconomic people. As someone who lived not so long ago when literally saving a dime mattered, no thank you.
- TylerE 7y agoRounding up is dumb, but that is t really an argument. There are standard rounding rules (applies to the total, not the line item) that result in rounding up and down with equal frequency.
- Scoundreller 7y agoWell, pretty much equal frequency. I think the rule is usually round up $x.x3, but round down $0.08. But there will be more 3s than 8s: Benford’s Law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law
- dmurray 7y agoThis makes 0 sense. Firstly, if you're rounding to the nearest 5c, you can round up both $x.x3 and $x.x8, and get fair rounding. Perhaps you are thinking of the slightly more complicated deal with rounding to the nearest 10c, where you round down $x.05 and up $x.15. And Benford's law applies to leading digits, not the least significant digit. It's right there in the first line of your link.
- diebeforei485 7y agoCouldn't they just get new coins (which would be shiny) from the mint? Would that be more expensive than washing them?
- GhostVII 7y agoDoesn't seem like a super profitable thing to do. The washer estimated that he washed 1.5 million in change over 20 years. Paying someone 3 days a week over 20 years is a pretty significantly portion of that, although it doesn't say how many hours a day they are paid for.
- tln 7y ago1.5 million in change means more than (since you give out less than $1 in change) 1.5 million interactions at the hotel are that much nicer. They also paid a lot for the nice interior at the hotel. It's about luxury
- quickthrower2 7y agoAwful popup videos and ads. Atrocious loading time. Dr;
- OrgNet 7y agoThey are probably damaging rare/valuable coins by washing them... this is a pretty ridiculous idea anyways...
- simonw 7y agoI visited this hotel last year and asked around after the cleaned coins. The first few staff members I asked had no idea what I was talking about - but they found me a more tenured member of staff and he told me that they don't do this any more. Which is sad, because I wanted some shiny pennies!
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoHe probably retired and that was the end of it. A law firm near where I worked had an elderly lady who worked as an elevator operator up until a couple of years ago. Once she retired, the elevator was set to modern operation. They could have switched over long ago but kept her as the elevator operator, likely because she had been there so long and in the big scheme of things it didn't cost much. Might have been the same with the Westin St. Francis who long ago no longer really needed a coin cleaner but he was part of their connection to their past and didn't cost very much to keep around. Once he was gone though, there was little reason to get a replacement.
- m4rtink 7y agoThis reminds of Book Off, Japan's biggest used book store. They use special machines to slightly shave off edges of books[0], so that the books appear newer. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Off#Operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Off#Operations
- crooked-v 7y agoThat trick with the edges is a pretty good value add, since a lot of people don't really care about the actual age or history of the book, they just want their bookshelves to appear neat.
- catalogia 7y agoTheoretically I think it could actually extend the life of books, assuming a clean fresh edge is less likely to propagate tears than a rough battered edge which might have stress-concentrating nicks. Then again, pages tearing doesn't really seem like a particularly common failure mode for books.
- raverbashing 7y agoWhat you're saying applies to materials under stress, not paper
- catalogia 7y agoRight, tears usually happen when you're turning a page.
- kristianp 7y agoHow does a chain of second hand bookshops succeed in this day and age? Is it because manga are more like magazines in size and regularity of purchase than novels? I'd love it if there was something like that in my country.
- m4rtink 7y ago