There’s a few countries that use US currency as the premium currency. Its very bizarre to be halfway around the world and see US dollars, but its a strong and reliable currency in countries where the local currency is too volitile to use.
Yeah, like Cambodia. The ATMs near my hotel spat out dollars, but deep in the city it was local currency. Everyone accepted dollars but they did charge a bit higher if you were a dollar spender if you calculated the local currency conversion on that. From my country it was easier to get dollars too before I flew out, vs Riels which were harder to find and had a pretty bad exchange rate.
Ecuadorians are very touchy about the condition of their paper bills. I tried to pay for a Panama hat with some cash that included a slightly torn but fully in tact $10, and the shop owner refused. As such, more durable dollar coins, which were minted by the US but never really caught on, are quite popular.
Interestingly they do mint their own coins, with Ecuadorian half dollar, quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuadorian_centavo_coins
I like the Sacagawea and “Innovation” dollar coins. The problem with 'em, though, is people horde and collect them so they’re not as available as the regular paper bills even though they are currently still in production. They come across so rarely, I also tend to think “oooh I should hold onto this!” Whenever I get one back as change.
The only downside to using them I’ve run into is having to show the clerk it’s a dollar and not a quarter.
Wait, can’t yall just… go to the bank? I walked into a local bank a year or so ago and asked if I could exchange for them, they asked how many and just exchanged them like anything else.
I’m sure if I wanted thousands that would be a problem, but I’d be surprised if they didn’t have at least a handful.
We should’ve discontinued the dollar bill so that these coins would get used in the US, too.
I lived in Ecuador for a bit and it’s pretty terrible when you pay for a $5 item with a twenty dollar bill and the cashier hands you back fifteen of these coins, which has happened to me on multiple occasions.
Just put those coins into your adorable coin purse.
Nothing like clicking on the large X to close an ad video on the web page, but it doesn’t close, even after pressing the X multiple times. :/
They are few alternatives to fandom but nothing that comes close to fandom’s popularity.
Unfortunately the web has become a place where you need to download ublock origin and learn to block specific elements.
Unfortunately the web has become a place where you need to download ublock origin
The irony is that I do have it installed/using it. It’s just the video player puts an X there but ignores when you click on the X.
Try noscript (firefox only)
I disagree. I hate carrying any coins, while dollars of any denomination fit nicely in my wallet.
I have a hunch that if we were to swap to these instead of paper dollars for $1, prices would go up simply because retailers would you d everything up to the nearest $5 increment.
That didn’t happen in Australia when we replaced our $1 note with a $1 coin.
But these days, it’s a non issue, because as a country, we basically don’t use cash at all
Canadian here, between electronic payments and coins being more durable than paper or polymer money, retailers don’t have any incentive to charge a less competitive price.
Awesome job on killing the penny up there! Wish we could do that in the US.
We need to kill the nickel too.
Isn’t the wallet thing kinda backwards though? Like, it’s not as if we all had wallets perfectly sized to carry this kind of paper money before the paper dollar was introduced.
I figure that if coins had been the predominant form of currency for at least the past century, we’d have a great way to carry coins other than a pouch, and paper money would be inconvenient.
I use a wallet phone case, there is no good way for a coin pouch for that.
Your pants pockets.
That’s less convenient than one place, sorry
Plebs without sacks of coins 🙄
I have a lot of those “gold” dollar coins. For a long time after they came out, I’d ask the cashiers at stores and banks to trade me paper dollars for whatever gold coins they had available. Many times I had to dig into my stash to get by, so it’s not like I’m sitting on a massive horde of them or anything, but I have about a hundred of them.
Well lookie who we have here… Mr Moneybags.
Yeah, me and my 100 $1 coins that I collected over ten years, sitting so pretty.
These are legal U.S. tender, minted in the U.S. Not common in the U.S. but still valid.
Pay attention to your other coins though. Ecuador does mint its own coins that match the American ones identically (1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 centavos) and also has some older 1 sucre coins that match these 1 dollar coins. Those would not be legal tender in the U.S., I’m pretty sure.
Ah, the $0.50 coin
I have these supposed $6 left over. If they turn out to be fake, I will shed a tear and move on. But thank you.
I was just giving some info… I’m not saying they’re fake or anything. I actually found it quite interesting to have the Ecuadorian versions of the coins.
I am finding this all very interesting. Apparently people from the US are not surprised by this at all and my foreignness is on full display.
Naw all good. To be fair, how many of us in the US know Ecuador uses American dollars?? I had no idea so I’m glad you posted. This is a cool tidbit of info!
These aren’t rare or unseen. All legal US money
Thank you; I didn’t know that. You do have a rather big country and I still sort of wonder if it is universally recognized. Again, just going by never having seen them in movies. Maybe United Statesians aren’t just fictional characters in movies. We’ll never know.
United Statesians
You can just say American.
No offense intended. I have been to a lot of countries in the Americas and the US (despite being rather big) is not really a place I go to. So when I specify like that, it is from my own experience (and—you know—actual geography and stuff) and I am a little bit sorry to have apparently offended.
Edit: that sounded sarcastic because it was a bit, but really, I didn’t intend to offend. Sorry, let’s be friends.
It’s not about offence, it’s about how ridiculous it sounds.
My friend, I am open to suggestions. “American” with like 100-ish countries in it doesn’t really narrow it down for me. Peace and love and all that stuff.
Mate, there is literally only one country with America in it’s name.
Furthermore in a 2 continent Americas model, there is no other peoples American could refer to because the people from the continents are either North American or South American.
Shit if anything, United Statesians could refer to the United Mexican States. So you’re making it confusing when it wasn’t before.
These aren’t rare in the sense that everybody has one they keep as a collectible. If I went down to 7/11 and tried to buy something with it they’d give me a funny look.
no they wouldnt. its money. i work at a gas station we get these all the time
I have a friend who works at a bank, and when he was a teller there was a guy who would come in every friday and exchange 500 in dollar coins of varying types, the little brass colored ones here, the silver looking ones, and also 50 cent pieces.
They didn’t carry that much at any time because nobody really brings them in so they had to start special ordering them for this one guy. Every week.
No idea what he uses them for, but either he’s got a shitload of them, or he makes it hail at strip clubs.
No idea what he uses them for,
Let’s say you want to buy a computer. You could, like a boring person, go to Best Buy and purchase a computer for 800 bucks on a credit card. Or you could dress up like a pirate with 800 gold doubloons in a sack, and slam that shit on the counter during checkout.
At today’s gold prices, 800 US dollars is just one single small gold coin. A classic 1 oz Krugerrand coin is currently worth more than 2,000 US dollars.
He was referring to using the sack of dollar coins as if they were gold doubloons, not actual gold coins.
This seem completely reasonable
My guess is that he runs something that needs to give automated change. Vending machines, car washes, arcades, etc… Basically, if someone puts a $20 into the car wash but only wants a $10 wash, it’s easy to just dispense ten $1 coins as change.
Coin handlers are mechanically very easy. Coins don’t vary in size and shape, so it’s easy to automatically detect which coins have been inserted, dispense change, and reject coins that don’t match. Paper money sorters are much more complicated, and more prone to failure.
Likely owns a vending machine business. They’re easier to return than a handful of quarters if someone uses a 5 dollar bill to buy something for a buck and change.
The $0.50 coin is definitely not legal in the US
Cite your source.
Source is me living in Ecuador lol. Ecuador is allowed to make their own coins <$1. So some of the coins here are made by the US. The ones made in Ecuador say so, and they’re not legal tender in the US.
We have different 50¢ pieces.
All the coins pictured here are $1 coins but the US absolutely has legal tender $.50 coins.
It’s not legal to murder someone with a half-dollar coin, but it’s certainly legal to buy something with it.
So that’s where they all went. I haven’t seen those in circulation since I bought stamps from a vending machine.
That actually makes a lot of cents.
I don’t get it
if it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense
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The person made a very very very bad pun. I replied with sarcasm so obvious that it didn’t need an /s tag.
That said, I admire your desire to be helpful.
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A bit like the Channel Islands - they use British Pounds but if you try to use them on the mainland they’ll not be accepted. Other way round is fine.
Would these be accepted in the US? Like maybe a gas station attendant would think these are fake but also maybe a bank would take them? Never going to have a chance to test that out; just curious-ish.
Yes, banks take them.
I don’t live in the US. I have only ever seen the dollar bills in movies. Maybe these coins are actually normal to y’all but I found it fascinating.
Nope, I haven’t seen one since the early 2000s, when they rolled out Sacajawea dollars and then stopped a few years later because boomers were afraid they’d confuse them with quarters.
They used to use the Sucre. When it crashed a lot of people lost a lot of money. I wish I knew more about that, and why they decided to bend over and use the world’s biggest terrorist organization’s currency.
