Return of the $2 Bill Conspiracy

[kevin_standlee]

I like using $2 bills, especially at conventions. Actually, I think the USA should follow Canada and stop printing $1 bills, embrace the $1 coin, and use the $2 bill. (Yes, I know Canada dropped the $2 bill as well; one step at at time.) One of the reasons I use them at conventions is as an attempt to show that we're putting money into the hotel in a noticeable way. I use them primarily for tips, so as to spread it around.

But getting $2 bills can be a hassle sometimes. Yesterday, I went to the branch near my office and inquired about them. the teller said there were two bundles of $200 each in the vault if I'd like to buy an entire bundle. I agreed, and a few minutes later I was handed a brand new bundle of one hundred $2 bills.

This is a bit much, even for me, and even though Lisa will want some of them. If anyone wants to buy some of them off of me, particularly if you're planning to use them for Westercon expenses at-con, see me at BASFA or at the con and we'll deal.

Comments

[smofbbs.livejournal.com]

My grandmother used to pay for my piano lessons with $2 silver certificates....

[kproche.livejournal.com]

I'll be happy to buy some.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

I'll take as many as you want to get rid of.

$2 bills

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

I'll take some. I still have a couple of $1 and $2 silver certificates. Collectors'items, I guess.

[mkillingworth.livejournal.com]

I'd love to have some, but I'm not sure how we would work out the exchange. We have a US bank account, I'm just not sure how we could make the switch.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't worry about that. $2 bills aren't really rare; you just have to fuss at the bank until they order some for you, and you have to be willing to buy a bundle of 100. Next time you and I are at the same convention, I may have some available.

Exchange can also be done through the Bank of Morgan Standlee. *smile* That's how my mother gets UK pound coins for the coin-cutting business.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I use $2 bills as bookmarks. When they loose their crispness, I get replacements from the bank and put the old ones into circulation. I've had more than one author autographing books for me comment on my unique book mark.

[waywardcats.livejournal.com]

I like that you're doing that, I won't be at the con, but maybe I will get some to generally spread around. I do that sometimes with the dollar coins sometimes, but cashiers still look at me funny occasionally.

I would also like to see us dump the penny as Australia has done.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It's the same sort of idea as the Silver Dollar Fair in Chico (where I attended college). Specifically, the 1950's section:

In 1950, it appeared that the fair was in trouble. The local merchants seemed unappreciative of the business generated by the fair and were apparently unwilling to support it as enthusiastically as before. W.H. “Old Hutch” Hutchinson was working as publicist for the fair that year. He hit upon a way to dramatize to the merchants the impact of the fair on their businesses. He ordered 50,000 silver dollars from the U.S. Mint, and all premiums and much of the fair’s business were transacted with these new coins. As the large, heavy coins filled their cash registers to overflowing, the merchants got the message.

Not that my little contribution will make much of a difference, but I can try. For ConJose, I sort of wanted to set our at-the-door price at $198 instead of $200 and give any cash payers $2 bills in change, and make an effort to flood the area with $2 bills. Nobody but me was ever enthusiastic about this idea, and as someone who has had to deal with odd change at Site Selection* I understand.

*In 1990 in The Hague, the voting fee was NLD48, USD22, and GBP18.50, all three of which drove us crazy, especially those people (logically enough) paying with a fifty-guilder note. I know that if I'd had anything to do with it, I would have set the fee at NLD50 even if the other two were unchanged, even if that did overcharge people slightly.

[johno.livejournal.com]

It's a long established way of informing a area that group is moving $$ into their coffers.

I'll gladly trade you a more common $20 or two, for 10 or 20 $2 bills.



When C & I were cleaning out her Aunt's house after, Aunt Ginny had passed away. We found a large jar of silver dollars and half-dollars. Doing a quick check, we found they were nothing special. So C & her cousin split the coins.

On the way home, we found we were cash poor at a restaurant. So we paid with the coins. The young clerk clearly didn't believe us that they real money and went in back ask. All we clearly heard "It still spends. Accept it!"

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Lisa has a fantasy of being wealthy enough to buy an American Gold Eagle coin (face value $50; actual value around $600 depending on the price of gold) and try spending it to see if the merchant will take it. Of course, if anyone had ever tried to pass me a $20 gold piece when I worked in retail, my reaction would have been to have accepted it before the customer changed his mind, then change it back out of the till into my own pocket. What Lisa wants to know by such an experiment is how intelligent the person behind the counter is.

(The real trick would be to get a much older pre-1930s gold eagle or double eagle, but those were demonetized in 1934, and I don't know if they were ever technically reinstated. You'd still be a fool to not accept it at face value, but you'd at least be a law-abiding fool.)

[melchar.livejournal.com]

I'm interested! I'll be there and have a 20 or 2 for $2's. Yay!

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Wow, at this rate, I'm going to have to go buy that other bundle of $2 bills from my local branch's vault!

Excellent Idea!

[dinogrl.livejournal.com]

Do it! I am sure Dave Clark and Dave G would want some. So would I!
:-)

Re: Excellent Idea!

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, they'll love me at the San Mateo/Laurelwood Branch of Bank of America, because they'll finally be able to get those $2 bills off of their inventory. Fortunately, I have enough cash on hand to be able to afford drawing out that much at once; however, I'd better remember to re-deposit some of it after it changes into larger-denomination bills, or some of my creditors will be unhappy with me a week or so later.

[tkunsman.livejournal.com]

Curious to see what you might do in Japan. Tips are really not part of custom in Japan, but more to the point I really can't think of an equivalent to the $2 bill in Japanese currency.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Nothing I can do there. If the local custom is not to tip, then I don't tip.

[howeird]

While I love our $2 bill, I think it is the handsomest obverse of any bill in the collection, the reason countries do away with smaller bills is inflation. When it takes $2 to buy $1 worth of product, the dollar bill goes away, demoted to coinage.

I would rather not see that happen here. Canada did it when their dollar was buying about 2/3 of what it used to against the US dollar.

Historically, we made paper money to represent denominations which were too cumbersome to carry around as precious metal in our pockets. And it also let the Fed store the metal and issue paper surrogates, to slow the flow of gold and silver across the borders.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I'd say the US dollar has pretty much reached that point. $1 today has the buying power of $0.16 in 1965, when I was born. When I was growing up, a quarter bought me two games of pinball. Now it's fifty cents for one game. As dollars "feel" like quarters did when I was growing up, why not demote them to coinage?

There are a lot of vending machines that should be taking dollar coins but instead have to install bill validators, and it seems to me that this costs more.

And BART needs to update their machinery. They still give out change in only quarters, which is fine if I'm playing pinball, but otherwise isn't very good. VTA and Caltrain and the Postal Service have installed equipment that deals with and gives change in dollar coins, so why can't BART?

[howeird]

Okay, I'll take your point on inflation, but I think the logical first step is to eliminate pennies. The next logical step IMHO is to make the dollar coin easier to identify - current dollar coins are too much like a quarter. Canada's 2-dollar coin (the "twonie") is a good example

- wrap a small coin inside a larger one. Or just make it a little larger in diameter (not in thickness - that's what keeps people from using 50-cent pieces, I think).

Vending machines will have to change regardless - to accept a $2 bill, for instance.

[mwillmoth.livejournal.com]

I think in this case the US should go metric. Namely, we should have 1c, 10c, 100c/$1, $10, $100 and $1000 denominations. Whether they are coins or bills isn't important, but for argument sake we make the first three coins and the last three bills. This would cut down on lots of confusion and truly show the world that we can do metric better :-)

<== Mike ==>

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

In a sense, we already did that. The US coinage system was one of the first (if not the first) to be metric. The units are cent, dime, dollar, eagle ($10), and union ($100; but from what I read, the union was never actually adopted officially as a unit). If you tried to apply metric values to them, you'd have cent, dekacent (10¢), hectocent (100¢), kilocent (1000¢), and myriacent (10000¢). But deka-, hecto-, and myria- aren't often used in the metric system (except for hectare -- a square hectometer, or 100 square meters, where a square meter is an are).

I don't see any problem with having coins for multiples or divisions of a unit, although if we were consistent, our coins would be 1¢, 2¢, 5¢, 10¢, 20¢, and 50¢ (no quarters), because that's what our bills do. What I do wish, for the benefit of visitors to the US, is that our coins had their values in numerals written on them. I didn't realize until I traveled overseas just how confusing US coins are to foreigners.

And I wouldn't object to us losing the smallest coin and having to round everything to the nearest 5¢. In that case, the 1¢ and (hypothetical) 2¢ coins would go away, but $1 and $2 coins would enter the system, like in Canada. Yep, inflation at work.