Toonies

[asterroc]

Today I picked up three $2-bills. I saw them in the lunch lady's cash drawer Friday but didn't have any spare money on me. I'd forgotten them by lunch today but when I saw them again and realized I had the spare cash I traded them in. When I started examining them I saw that they were printed in 2003, immediately prompting me to suspect they were fake (but at only a loss of $6 I figured it was worth it for the entertainment). Upon further examination I saw they had the red and blue little strings in them, and the printing was remarkably good. And two of them the numbers are sequential. When I got home I looked up online and it turns out that there was a printing of two dollar bills in 2003, so it appears these really are legit.

I wonder how someone came across three of them, and why they spent them. And why the US doesn't really circulate $2's - both the EU and UK use two-coins, 2-euro-cent and 2-Euro coins, and 2-British-cent and 2-Pound coins, are all in general circulation.

One of my Mystery Hunt team partners agrees with me that finding a forgery might've been even more interesting than finding a legit bill. I used Where's George? to confirm the years and serial numbers - these are legit numbers on my bills, so I accept that they are real.

Comments

[spazzy444.livejournal.com]

Canada also uses a $2 coin, the Two-ney

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

As asked below, do you have 2¢ coins?

I also know that the Euro goes in patterns of 1-2-5: 1c, 2c, 5c, 10c, 20c, 50c, 1$, 2$, 5$, etc. Does Canada do that too? That pattern is actually logarithmic (multiplicative, each one is approximately double the one before it) so I like it. :)

[spazzy444.livejournal.com]

no $.02 coins, just $2 coins.
The remainder of their currency is the same as the US (other than their $1 as coin), so it doesn't follow the Euro pattern. That is quite neat though.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

The remainder of their currency

Oh duh, sorry mixed you up with calezephyr77 who lives in CA I think... :-P Unless I'm entirely cornfuzzled....

[spazzy444.livejournal.com]

No worries, I carry dual citizenship
;o)~

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

twonie, i think, like the loonie. unless that's a looney, but i don't think--actually maybe it's a loony? in which case it would be a twony, which looks strange.

i forget whether Canada has a two-cent coin.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I knew someone in grad school who was part of an impromptu society which made a point of using $2 bills. Lots of them. Like, getting $100 worth of bills at a time and spending them everywhere.

One of their particular joys was giving them to people at cash registers...and watch them try to figure out where to put them. :)

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Can you just get them from banks? I could totally see myself doing that sort of thing.

One of their particular joys was giving them to people at cash registers...and watch them try to figure out where to put them. :)

Sacajawea dollars too.

[spazzy444.livejournal.com]

My mom used to "buy" them from banks. For fun.

[tacotortoise.livejournal.com]

Given that two of the bills were sequential, they almost certainly came from the same person, and likely the third bill as well. So, yes, they probably did go to a bank and stock up for the purposes of the bewildered looks.

tiurin currently does the same things with Eisenhower dollar coins, which he is able to get in quantity whenever he goes to Nevada. He likes to leaves one with the check at a restaurant whenever we eat out. In many ways, it's an even better source of bewilderment than the $2 bills. Most people know of the existence of $2 bills, and I'd guess most of them have even handled one at some point, but production of Eisenhower dollars stopped before most waitstaff were born. Since then, we have had three different designs for the dollar coin, counting the presidential series as a single design, and all of the newer coins are significantly smaller than the Ikey. Tiurin's gotten a lot of funny looks as a result.

Once, when I was out to eat with him and mytheria, we started talking about the reactions he's gotten from the coins, and were in the midst of the discussion when our waitress came back to pick up the check. As expected, she expressed some bewilderment, and Mytheria and I both broke out laughing. Now she started worrying that we were playing a joke on her, and I guess she was half right. Fortunately, she was in good humor about it when we explained that there were no hidden cameras, and the coin was just older than she was. In fact, she seemed excited about the prospect of taking the unusual coin home with her. You should ask Tiurin about it sometime.