Worthless

[muckefuck]

I was buying a snack from the vending machine at work just now (I know, I know, I need to get my ass to the store and pick up some more healthy trail mix soon) when I noticed that one of the "nickles" in my pocket was suspiciously thin and dull. With a glance, I took in the pompadour on the portrait and the word "sentimos" and immediately thought to myself What banana republic is so hopeless that they can't even spell Spanish correctly on their money? A moment later it occurred to me that it probably wasn't Spanish at all but Pilipino. Sure enough, the full phrase is "Dalawampu't limang sentimos". Somewhere, sometime yesterday, I got slipped a twenty-five cent piece from the Philippines. (Current value in US money: about 0.6¢.)

Incidentally, this reminds me that one of my souvenirs from China is the most worthless paper bill I've ever received as change[*]. The face value is one jiao, that is, one tenth of a yuan or just over US 1¢. Strangely, the Chinese seem even more coin-averse than the Americans. Sure, they have a one yuan coin in circulation, but that's their largest and it still has an exchange value of only 13¢. (The €2 coin, for comparison, approaches $3 at our current sucky rates of exchange.) Even so, we rarely got our hands on them; everyone seemed to prefer bills for amounts of half a yuan and up. (We tried to get rid of all our wu jiao bills, but I think we still got stuck with a few.)

Some cashiers took interesting steps in order to avoid having the cash drawer overflow with singles. A common solution at more informal venues was to origami-fold stacks of five one-yuan notes into triangles (rather like the paper footballs we used for tabletop games in study hall back in high school). I first came across this at a spring-roll booth on a "snack street" near the Wangfujing Bookstore; unfortunately, someone had assembled them a bit too hastily and worked a five into the triangle they handed me, meaning that I got more back in change from that exchange than the cost of my food.


[*] I do have a bill denominated in PLZ, the Polish currency in use before the 1995 redenomination which knocked off four zeroes, but this was simply handed to me by a Czech clerk because I found it amusing.

Comments

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

Remind me to give you some Transdniestrian rubles next time you're in town - I don't know what the current exchange rate is, but I think it's something like 2 billion per $1. I've got a 10,000 ruble note around somewhere.... it was 10, but was overprinted at some point in the '90s as hyperinflation took over.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I have an Uzbek 50 Sum note, which is worth about 4¢, and, due to bad planning, a whole bunch of UK 2 pound coins, worth $4.16 apiece. You beat me on the worthless note front.

Why does the US hate coins, so? The various $1 coins are annoyingly similar in diameter and heft to quarters - I can't help feeling it's a form of passive resistance on the part of the treasury department. That said, I find the British and Euro methods silly, because the coins get big and heavy in your pocket. Bring back pieces of 8.

[dedalusj.livejournal.com]

Both Cambodia and Vietnam use all paper money. I thought I may have had you beat with the 100 Dong note,but when I did the math the result was $.006, a tie. I forget what the lowest denomination of the Cambodian Riel is but I have always thought of that as the most worthless currency because the largest denomination available is the 5000 riel note, which is worth about $1.25. As a result Riels are only used as change and USDs are used to buy things.

[moa1918.livejournal.com]

I found it depends on the location, in Shanghai and Hangzhou the coins were more popular, and people would avoid one yuan and jiao bills, but in Beijing the bills are more common, and people prefer them to the coins. A matter of what people are used to, I guess. :)
Personally I think the most annoying thing is when the prices are set so that you need one jiao to pay the exact sum (for example something costing 6 jiao), since both the one jiao coins and the bills are really small and the hardest to find in my pockets. :p
Moa