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Buy my gal a brand-new dress and I'll throw the rest away
I just rolled twenty-five dollars' worth of dimes, nickels, and pennies into those little paper sleeves in which you deposit coins at the bank. It came out of a mug on the mantelpiece that had been collecting non-quarter pocket change since we moved here. I say this not to boast—it's going straight into the rent—but to remark on this practice, which I grew up with and think of as normal and couldn't help wondering as I fought with the little paper sleeves if anyone will still observe in another ten years or if coins really are on the way out. I hope not. I don't want a paperless, cashless society; I like things I can hold. I couldn't find a nickel older than 1961 or a penny older than 1959; the dimes all bottomed out in the '80's. I put away my birth year more than a dozen times.
It has been a very house-intensive day. I worked. I cleaned off the dining room table and sorted its piles of mail. I paid bills. I mopped the kitchen floor after the horrifying discovery of a spore nest by the back porch door. I walked out to Stop & Shop while it was still relatively warm and sunny and bought jam and cheese and matzah. I have not yet determined what is making the high-pitched, painfully ear-filling tone we've been hearing for two days and nights now, but the fact that I can hear it while standing on the sidewalk at the top of my street decreases the chances of it being some electronic responsibility of the third-floor tenants, unfortunately. Street noise kept me from pinpointing it further, even after walking around the block a couple of times. I poured out and sorted and counted and rolled coins.
In short, today feels like I've been awake forever.
It has been a very house-intensive day. I worked. I cleaned off the dining room table and sorted its piles of mail. I paid bills. I mopped the kitchen floor after the horrifying discovery of a spore nest by the back porch door. I walked out to Stop & Shop while it was still relatively warm and sunny and bought jam and cheese and matzah. I have not yet determined what is making the high-pitched, painfully ear-filling tone we've been hearing for two days and nights now, but the fact that I can hear it while standing on the sidewalk at the top of my street decreases the chances of it being some electronic responsibility of the third-floor tenants, unfortunately. Street noise kept me from pinpointing it further, even after walking around the block a couple of times. I poured out and sorted and counted and rolled coins.
In short, today feels like I've been awake forever.
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I am trying to type up a bunch of longhand stuff and I'm fairly sure I. B. Bangin' loaned Bertie Owen zir M key.
(ETA: I. B. Bangin' is the 2008 business-class Dell laptop that's the source of all the curlyquote woes in the universe, as it can only anymore run WordPad.)
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You, too.
(I have a lot of trouble remembering my calendar age, but I was born in 1981.)
I am trying to type up a bunch of longhand stuff and I'm fairly sure I. B. Bangin' loaned Bertie Owen zir M key.
Oh, dear. You may need that for the m/m, though less for the nb.
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My experience was often with my mother, but otherwise much the same. I used to find a lot more T tokens mixed in with the change.
I admit that I'm willing to substitute "letting the kids dump the jar into the machine at the credit union" for that experience, though.
Can you watch it sort them?
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Alas, I don't think so, but it's been a while! They still enjoy it, though.
Coins
The UK policy is that old money (coins or notes) goes extinct after the newer version is released. Banks will still trade it in, but stores won’t take the old currency. As far as I can tell, that means that there is no pocket change more than about four years old now.
Re: More about UK coinage than anyone sane probably wants to know
There was a lengthy post decimalisation period where the old shilling and two-shilling coins continued to circulate and were revalued as five and ten new pence pieces; they were the same shape as the five and ten new pence pieces. However, the Mint changed the size of the five and ten ps in the early nineties, and at that stage the earlier coins were withdrawn. They recently did the same with the pound coin. The Mint has been gradually withdrawing the older five and ten p pieces when they get their hands on them, but that's because the composition of them has changed (on cost grounds) and they want to get the ones made of more valuable metal back. But the older ones haven't expired and remain legal tender.
But there are loads of five and ten pence from the early nineties out there, and the twenty pence piece has never changed, either (it was introduced post decimalisation, though, so there are none as old as the 1 and 2p coins). But you can still find ones from the early eighties.
Notes change much more frequently, as they are more vulnerable to counterfeiting.
Re: More about UK coinage than anyone sane probably wants to know
Thank you for this information! That is neat.
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Same. Cash is so much more tangible.
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And doesn't track you quite so closely . . .
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