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Uncut Currency

usmint.gov

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Re: Uncut Currency

#281

Post by pontifk8r »

frankthedog wrote: post #214
neilv wrote: post #11

Steve Wozniak (the Apple cofounder) famously bought sheets of $2 bills, and had a printer perforate and gum them into pads. So he could literally tear off $2 bills, in front of people who might not even know it was real currency, to pay them. https://web.archive.org/web/20180311084811/http://archive.wo...

I once found a pad of tear off $2 on the ground of the departures drop off at O’hare airport. I thought it was a novelty initially but after closer inspection found the bills to be real. It’s been a 20 year mystery to me how that came to be since I’ve never seen anything like it since. Now I’m wondering if I found Woz’s pad. That would be quite interesting because when I was very young I crank called him after findin…

Make your own with padding cement. Put the stack of bills in a vice and coat one edge a few times with the cement. I did this for a nephew as a unique gift. Some people being paid with these are suspicious.

Re: Uncut Currency

#282

Post by thaumasiotes »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #137
api wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coins are horribly inconvenient compared to bills.

Do you have any experience in countries with large denomination coins? Anything smaller than a quarter is super annoying, even the quarter is borderline. It says something when a countries largest coin is too small to be useful. A 500 Yen (~$4) coin OTOH, is super nice.

> It says something when a countries largest coin is too small to be useful.

Specifically, it says "we haven't redenominated our currency in a while".

Re: Uncut Currency

#283

Post by lolinder »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #159
lolinder wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But these notes stop the printing process early—the purchaser is on the hook to cut them out. So these should cost less than the fully printed and cut bills if we're going by pure cost of creation. Do banks pay upwards of $1.50 on the dollar for new bills?

they only sell them as a novelty, and as a novelty they can charge a premium

Right, I think that's the actual answer.

Re: Uncut Currency

#284

Post by scarface_74 »

coldpie wrote: post #275
scarface_74 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are concerned with it hurting local businesses. > they come from the business you're buying from. For local businesses Which is not true. And some of the reasons - like security and losing money - is tin foil hat territory.

> Which is not true. Oh. Where does it come from then?

Retailers don’t “lose money” by accepting credit cards because on average consumers spend more when they use credit cards than they do when using cash.

Re: Uncut Currency

#285

Post by aaronharnly »

anonu wrote: post #117

50 $1s for $86 - thats highway robbery

I calculated the "cost per dollar" of all of the offerings on the website at the moment.

The best "deal" is the most expensive – $100 x 16 for $1,860, at $1.16 per dollar. The worst deal is the cheapest – $1 x 5 for $18.50, at $3.70 per dollar.

Sheet here - corrections welcome:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nb_WLW_WxOYSUS12fslf...

Re: Uncut Currency

#286

Post by mrguyorama »

throwaway8153 wrote: post #60
ziofill wrote: post #3

Would it be legal to use a sheet like that as currency?

Quote from Woz: "They meet the specs of the U.S. government, so by law, these are legal tender. I have been spending them. You can get arrested for them, you cannot get convicted because you're in the right." It is probably not something you should do unless you are prepared to pay for a good lawyer, and don't mind the risk of getting arrested

>They meet the specs of the U.S. government, so by law, these are legal tender.

That's not how it works. North Korea is great at producing dollars that "meet the specs" but they are still counterfeit.

The US dollar is not an open standard. Valid US currency is only produced by the mint. If you do something to a valid US dollar, it might still stay a valid US dollar, but that's not because they still "meet the specs".

Meanwhile the law says

>“whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.” 18 U.S.C. § 333.

Re: Uncut Currency

#287

Post by qingcharles »

muhammadusman wrote: post #258
nlh wrote: post #154

(Professional coin & currency nerd here) Fun fact about these — when the treasury first issued these, many people decided to cut them into odd off-center pieces and sell the resulting notes as miscut errors. Once that started happening, the treasury (BEP to be specific) very quickly changed the serial numbers so they’re all very recognizable as having come from an uncut sheet. I didn’t check the latest for all denomi…

kinda off topic but since you're an expert here: what do people do with these uncut sheets? Is it mainly for collectors? also, my favorite form of getting currency is $2 bills in a 100 stack (so $200) from the bank. I used to use these for gift money on holidays :) but unfortunately my credit union doesn't order new stacks anymore, just jumbled up old $2 bills now.

I bought a sheet of $2 bills and tried to cut them myself with scissors first. My wife took one look at my handiwork and said "Well, you're going to jail."

Re: Uncut Currency

#288

Post by ternnoburn »

kube-system wrote: post #270
ternnoburn wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in accessibility. The ADA is barely acknowledged. Every automatic door, curb cut, and accommodation is still a tough fight.

ADA compliance is always a struggle in the US, but if you travel around the world, the US is leaps and bounds ahead of many places that don't even have the equivalent of the ADA to fight for.

Does "other people do it worse" mean we do it well?

Because I only put forward the claim that the US does it poorly. Whether others do it worse seems to have no bearing on whether we should strive to improve or not...

Re: Uncut Currency

#289

Post by georgecmu »

neilv wrote: post #11

Steve Wozniak (the Apple cofounder) famously bought sheets of $2 bills, and had a printer perforate and gum them into pads. So he could literally tear off $2 bills, in front of people who might not even know it was real currency, to pay them. https://web.archive.org/web/20180311084811/http://archive.wo...

I replicated this 5-6 years back: got a sheet of $2 bills and perforated it myself.

Then I separated the large sheet into strips and gave them out as souvenirs to friends.

This is what a complete sheet folded up looked like: https://imgur.com/a/uCS5930

Re: Uncut Currency

#290

Post by coldpie »

scarface_74 wrote: post #284
coldpie wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is not true. Oh. Where does it come from then?

Retailers don’t “lose money” by accepting credit cards because on average consumers spend more when they use credit cards than they do when using cash.

So, you agree that the points do come from the transaction fees after all?
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