Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uncut Currency

usmint.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 421 posts

Re: Uncut Currency

#411

Post by BizarroLand »

bityard wrote: post #259
bufferoverflow wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's listed at $500, doesn't mean someone will pay that.

The sold listings for "miscut dollar bill" would beg to differ. I am _always_ and _continually_ surprised at what people will pay for things. Literally _nobody_ scaled back their consumption or purchasing during post-COVID inflation. Home prices are sky-high but it's still a sellers market because buyers are scared that prices will jump again and instead of simply being a difficult purchase, maybe next year it will b…

I have a realtor friend and it's feast or famine.

Sure, housing prices are high, but matching and buyer and a seller is a logistical nightmare right now.

Re: Uncut Currency

#412

Post by geephroh »

My uncle gave me an uncut sheet of dollar bills as an xmas present when I was maybe 9 or 10. Many years later, I still remember that feeling of astonishment -- ranks among one the great Christmas gifts of my childhood.

Re: Uncut Currency

#413

Post by neilv »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #387
WalterBright wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a jar of quarters from throwing my change in it. No silver quarters, ever. And yah, I can spot a silver one immediately. The color and feel is different, and the edge of course is the dead giveaway.

I don't know what to tell you, the last 3 times I've changed a five at the car wash there's been at least 2 high silver count quarters in the pile, with a peak of 5.

Could be some elderly person in the area passed away, and a spouse/heir found all these hand-rolled quarters they'd saved in a desk drawer for decades, and didn't know they were saved because they were silver.

Re: Uncut Currency

#414

Post by brookst »

9dev wrote: post #207
brookst wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three problems: 1. Switching costs. There are a ton of vending machines and other automated stuff that takes dollar bills but not coins. You can say “oh they’d switch”, and maybe, but they don’t want to because it’s expense and complexity for little/no benefit. 2. Critical mass. Similar problem: nobody will invest in supporting dollar coins as long as their customers don’t use dollar coins. Customers won’t use them b…

With that mindset, you’re not going to accomplish anything at all. The same stagnation occurs with the switch from imperial units to metric. If modernising things is so scary you better not do it, other people will force the change on you, for better or worse, but you’re out of the loop.

I wasn’t making a prescriptive moral point, I was describing the reality of the situation.

Sure, someone may force the change to dollar coins on those who oppose it because it costs them money and offers them no benefit.

Re: Uncut Currency

#415

Post by bmitc »

kasey_junk wrote: post #101
bmitc wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people seem to forget that the U.S. is not a pure democracy. It's a democratic republic that is becoming more and more republic-like than democratic-like.

More and more compared to when? Since the founding we’ve changed to direct elections in the senate. Many states have passed faithless elector laws for the electoral college and 17 states (or 209 electoral votes) have passed the national popular vote law.

The U.S. is controlled by an ever shrinking collection of people and institutions, namely corporations and extremist groups. That's how it's more and more republic-like.

Sure, you could even bring a national voting system, but it wouldn't make it any less of a republic because of the outsized influence that the sub one percent of people have.

Re: Uncut Currency

#416

Post by scintill76 »

valarauko wrote: post #315
scintill76 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe in some cases there was no premium at all, not even shipping, so widespread manufactured spending was losing the Mint much more money than they were prepared for when they started the program.

I don't follow. Why would Manufactured Spend specifically cost the Mint money? It's not great for the credit card company, sure, but why the Mint? If the Mint was previously eating the interchange fees & shipping, ok, but that's not a manufactured spend specific issue.

I agree it's not specific to MS. But MS was probably inducing much more demand and thereby making them eat more fees than they planned to. (I don't have any inside information though.) Adding a premium would make it a little less attractive to MSers.

Re: Uncut Currency

#417

Post by mindslight »

scarface_74 wrote: post #356
mindslight wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that addresses what I said. Sure, similar dynamics have existed for a while. And sure, many consumers are happy with simulated achievement. That doesn't mean they aren't getting taken advantage of, or that the dynamic won't continue to get ever worse as the corporate surveillance machine gains more capabilities.

How much “worse” can they get? Radio Shack for instance has your information about your sales patterns since the 1990s even when using cash. Credit cards vs cash is the least of your problems and on a meta level, users have been willing to give their information to retailers and been doing couponimg for decades.

I'm still trying to work out whether you don't realize that Radio Shack closed like ten years back, or if you really think there is no difference between the information systems of now and thirty years ago.

Re: Uncut Currency

#418

Post by jcrash »

WorldMaker wrote: post #189
petesergeant wrote: post #12

gotta be someone somewhere with more money than sense using these as wallpaper

I love the story that a French building recently (2010s, I think) renovated and discovered back rooms wallpapered in very early American money and plenty more stuffed inside various walls as essentially insulation. There was no surprise as to why that might be because most of the bills had the obvious signature of Benjamin Franklin and there was one notorious French bordello in his diplomat days that he had been alle…

I would love a source for this if you could find one. I tried searching and will search more in depth later. Any more keywords or information you remember about the story?

Re: Uncut Currency

#419

Post by danielodievich »

cheeze wrote: post #375
danielodievich wrote: post #309

I tip exclusively with $2 bills because bartenders/event staff/doormen/shuttle people then always remember me. I get them from the bank and they are invariably crisp and never been folded. They kind of stick together because of this, too.

If you do this in Portland or Seattle, people just assume you were at a... gentlemens club that uses $2 bills for tips

interesting. I do this in Seattle all the time. Nothing like this seems to be assumed. I must tip in places that either hide their reaction well or do not assume that ;-\

Re: Uncut Currency

#420

Post by mindslight »

arunabha wrote: post #379
scarface_74 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain the “various reasons” that companies want to make less money?

Do yourself a favour and search HN for people's stories about their BigCo accounts for paid services being closed for no apparent reason. Most of the time these are accompanied (by design) with no way to getting beyond automated denial bots. The tired trope of capitalism ensuring that all customers will be served needs to die. Businesses always evaluate any additional revenue against the cost of getting that revenue.…

> Businesses always evaluate any additional revenue against the cost of getting that revenue

nit: this is still coming from the vein where businesses are taken to be super-computational agents/oracles. whereas really there is a lack of evaluation of the possible revenue being left on the table, and the focus is on what has already been found to be profitable.

Post reply on HN