My wife found this http://static1.bareka.com/photos/medium/5598016/aussiecoin.jpg at a local gas station the other day. The lady was about to throw it in the trash! It's just a nickel, but why would someone just throw it out? It's a neat looking coin and my only Australian coin. Guy~
Thoughts on the questions The photo opens nicely on the new host! Lovely coin. Nice color for circulated, especially across two continents [wink.] Have you seen this video that someone brought up in this thread? It's a digitalization on YouTube of a B&W 1966 educational filmstrip about recognizing the new Dollar-based coins. (1966 was the year Australia switched from AU£ to AU$.) To answer your questions: there are some people who just have low IQ (not to stereotype people who work at gas stations or anything) and whose brains are just not creative enough to imagine a use for something that is not easily converted into food or cigarettes. Other people rationalize not keeping things to maintain a certain quality of life as they understand it. Some people (like me) have a pathological compulsion to hoard things. This, I can attest, detracts from emotional well-being. It can also kill you. Lot's of people die when crushed by collapsing collections, such as stacks of decades old newspapers. I wonder if this has every happened to a specifically 'coin collecting' hoarder? Anyway, non-hoarders see this, either consciously or unconsciously, or imagine the potential for it , and want to be the opposite, and will keep nothing. You could say she could have given the coin to a kid or someone who would find it interesting, but (not kidding myself this was the case with said gas station employee) the same people who don't want to 'degrade' their own life by collecting, may not want to 'inflict' it on others. My two cents. Here is a link to the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation's helpsite for people with compulsive hoarding.
How old is it? Oh, I forgot. What year is it? Will probably be worth more than US$0.05 soon! (Exchange rate) [chuckling on the inside]
It's a 1998. I don't think it's worth anything but it's face value, but it it a neat coin that I hadn't seen before. Plus, I saved it from a life at the dump Guy~