Try this out.. If you had to guess which foreign coin costs the least (in US$) per pound.. what would it be? Now which one would be the least expensive per cubic foot? ie if you wanted to fill a cubic foot with coins for the least amount of money, which one would you choose? Obviously the smallest denom of a certain country.. which one? For both answers.. try to use modern issues.. but any comments are welcome!
good food for thought seriously, this will make one think, and my brain has already shut down! Will look for others who ponder and reach a conclusion
Nobody yet.. Who has the largest sized, smallest denomination? That would answer the second riddle. The first riddle is harder. No, I don't know the answer.
I'm not an expert on foreign monies, but in answer to the second riddle would be the various large cents (US, England, New Zealand.....). Just a guess.
If they are modern then it has a chance. When a country's money becomes suddenly worthless, the coins are not worth carrying around I guess, and they eventually go in as scrap metal and disappear, replaced with half-million dollar notes. It would be neet to have a pile of coins to fill a truck, at a cost of five bucks.. but it won't happen if the metal is worth more than the coin. .. anyway.. fun to think about.. I have some russian stuff from early 90 that feels like toy money. It would probably cost (in face value)a stack of 20 of them to buy a few pieces of toy money in the US ;P
Well, I don't know if there are any coins, but the Iraqi Dinar is mighty low now. A 10,000 Dinar note that was once worth USD 30,000, is now worth about USD 8.00. Also, I know Brazil has tiny tiny little 1 centimo coins.
There are a couple of faulty premises here and some definitions are needed to answer the questions. Older coins were rarely recalled when they went out of circulation. They normally died with a whimper rather than a bang. The coins would either be inflated away or would be replaced without a recall. Usually they would be left as worthless or nearly so. Many would simply be thrown away. Silver and gold wouldn't be disposed of but these weren't always recalled either and many of the coins would end up being sold as bullion and then might end up as scrap or in collections. In modern times it's much more likely that coins are recalled. But this won't happen when the value of the coins erode away. There's usually too much cost associated with transportation and processing to make the retrieval of base metal coins profitable. Even if the coins were recalled few people would bother to round up a few cents worth of coins to haul off to the bank. Recalls affect the higher denomination coins especially in currency changes and the like. To get an idea of what's cheap look at poundage. The worst stuff to have in poundage to find a buyer is the obsolete mexican fractional pesos from the '60's and '70's. Canadian cents are a turnoff. British one penny and half penny coins as well as the bronze French coins from the '70 will make for a hard sell. You might be ble to go to some country and load a truck pretty cheaply but often you'll find the difficulty isn't so much the cost of the coins in the load but finding any of the coins to start a load. Coins are simply destroyed or used for other purposes and can become very difficult to find after a short while. People destroy coins by the boatload now days. In the late '80's to mid-'90's there was a boat that made a regular run between Japan and South America bringing in cars and finished goods and returning to Japan with loads of coins for recycling. Even though a coin is inexpensive it can be caused by lack of emand rather than an enormous supply. Think of it this way; if all you ever see are people picking through accumulations forold coins then what do you suppose they have at home? Don't get me wrong because fortunately there are some collectors for the newer coins now days.
