June 17, 2008: Pretty Money
 

Let's face it, as popular and sought after as it is, the U.S. Dollar isn't very pretty. As a matter of fact, it's an embarrassment.
You can save yourself the embarrassment by putting all yours in the Cellar tip jar.

Would I lie to you, my oldest and dearest friends?*

http://cellar.org/2008/money.jpg




* if it doesn't involve sex. :cool:

Wow - very old pound note on there. I'd forgotten they were green.

We no longer have one pound notes, but the other colours remain as follows:
five pounds blue, ten pounds brown, twenty pounds purple and fifty pounds red
There's more variation in them now though.

Oh and look at all the other notes with the Queen on!
Australia, Mauritius, Solomon Islands.
I all seems quite obscene now.

Yeah, we should take a clue from all those others in your rogue's gallery. Put a crown on Lincoln, an organ grinder's monkey hat on Washington, and tie-dye the bills with day-glo colors.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA $1 NOTE FROM AUSTRALIA!! havent seen one of those in many many years. our money is much prettier now.
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thu...lian_notes.jpg

Proposed pretty money for U.S.

I've got one of those NZ Sir Edmund Hillary $5 notes. I was just looking at it a month or so ago and thinking how much our money sucks in comparison.

The US $20 bill with all the bees on the back swarming around the White House looks ridiculous.

Familiarity breeds contempt. :neutral: Our money has a certain quiet dignity, Bruce. Serene classicism. A stodgy yet assuring symmetry with George still.

"Rogues gallery" indeed, spudcon. I suspect a sizable percentage of the bill honorees have had statues to themselves toppled since they had the bills printed up.

This spring I was at a hardware store / gift shop in Lindsborg, Kansas,
:f187: "Little Sweden, U.S.A.," :f207:
a cute and perhaps surprisingly popular tourist destination, but 20 miles south of I-70 and just off I-135 (Salina-Wichita). :cheerldr:

Anywho, under the glass on the countertop at the cash register was a similar gallery from around the world. It had even more bills, which were not so neatly lined up. Many of them were very old, but many other designs were very nonstandard, like the Cook Islands hula dancer riding the hammerhead shark. "Wow, you get people from _____ in here?!" :f148: :f162: :f143: :f135: I enjoyed looking at them and talking with the owner for like 5 minutes. "You ever get that hula dancer from the Cook Islands in here?"

I read a few weeks ago that a federal appeals court ruled that the US bills discriminate against blind people because you can't tell them apart by feel. Many other countries have bills of different sizes to denote different values. In the US, blind people have to rely on others to help them prepare their money in special ways so they can keep track of the various denominations.

So we may see some significant changes to the US money relatively soon.

Come again? The dollar has sunk to an all time low against most major currencies, inflation has continued to erode its domestic value and some banks in several European countries are refusing to accept dollars...all of which are indications that the dollar is neither popular nor terribly sought after, at least on the currency exchange market.

all money is pretty if it's yours.

I really like the Cook Island one!

I say we switch to the original Zelda's rupees - not in dollar form, just the little crystals you can get from whacking bushes and monsters. Then all other countries will be embarrassed they didn't think of it first!

Other than the attack of the Monopoly money, I don't see that happening. Come on, we can't even switch over to a dollar coin here. I do suspect a conspiracy involving the vending industry ... which would also block the differently sized bills. I already have enough trouble getting vending machines to accept bills!

Welcome to the Cellar, rasafrasit. :D
Tell you what, the money you don't line your bird cage with, you can send the tip jar. Or any of 20 million illegal aliens would be glad to help you divest yourself of it. Hell, I can think of 300 million people that would help you out.

If he/she is givin it away - I'll be glad to help out.

Here's some money that's no longer worth anything.
Top, ten cents, U.S. Military Script used in Viet Nam during the 60s
Middle, five pesos from the Marcos years in the Philippines
Bottom, 100 piastres, from the 60s also, Viet Nam.

I don't see the US switching, but not for Wolf's reason. Paper money is already becoming less and less common. I hardly carry any real cash on me anymore - especially since fast food places started accepting cards.

That may be true, but Federal appeals courts have a lot of weight to throw around. There are something like 60 days left to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, but odds are the Supes won't hear it, and after that, the Dept of Engraving and Printing will have to make some changes.

I deal exclusively in cash, and most of my customers in the pub do too, even though we accept cards.

Almost all the guys in there have big wads of cash, they're self employed taxi drivers, van drivers, builders etc.

You'd be surprised how much cash there still is in circulation, certainly in this country.

Do you think the "pretty" colors help stop counterfeiters? Seems like some of those would be pretty hard to duplicate.

The UK notes have a whole host of countercounterfitting gadgets. Metal strips, watermarks, microprinting, special paper (not as cottony as US bills), holograms.... see here for a full list for each note:


http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/bankn...security_5.htm

Well actually, our Australian money is not paper it's plastic, much easier and so much better, and they last so much longer. I don't know how many notes I lost many many years ago in the wash, at least with plastic notes the washing machine just gives it a good old cleaning and gets rid of all those horrible nasty germs that money tends to collect. I think from memory New Zealand and Australia were the first countries to have plastic money.:f9: :f138: :cheerldr:

here it would just get rid of all the cocaine molecules. Wonder if you could reclaim them? maybe gray water would become a valuable commodity?

We have different sized notes here and vending machines seem to manage them ok although with some vending machines they will only accept 5's or 10's for example.

A lot of them still just take coins though, but since our coins go all the way up to $2, usually anything you want from a vending machine is managed with that.

Cook Islands...

Didn't some local dumb ass drunk driver just kill the king of the Cook Islands while he was here on a visit?

Ha! I found a couple of $1 & $2 dollar Aussie bills the other week. I showed the 12 year old twins and their thirteen year old brother. They had no idea we ever had them in use. Their first question: didn't I have a trouble fitting them into the vending machines?

Seeing the green quid brought back a flood of memories from the last time I saw one - when I was 8.