Iconoclastic currency

[robotech_master]

Want to have some cheap fun?

Next time you're at your bank, withdraw some money but have the teller give it to you in obscure denominations. For instance, $2 bills. (Most banks will have at least some of them, because banks are where all circulated cash eventually ends up—and since the $2 has fallen out of fashion, they don't tend to get circulated back out again unless people specifically ask for them.)

Then pay for your purchases at various stores with them, and watch the cashiers' reactions. Quite frequently they'll barely glance at them and take them for $1 bills, and you have to tell them to look again. And then they have to figure out what to do with them, because modern cash drawers don't have a place for them. (The free Taco Bell food story is probably apocryphal, but you never know.)

(I also like using the $1 coin, although it's not quite so obscure, just because it makes so much more sense to make purchases of just a buck or two with change rather than having to dig for my wallet. Unfortunately, since almost nobody else except post office vending machines uses these coins, I have to go to my bank to get more of them.)

Comments

[eagle]

All the snack vending machines around here take $5, $10, and $20 bills and give dollar coins as change, as do the ticket machines for mass transit. I've paid for things in stores several times with dollar coins and people don't even give them a second glance.

It's probably been fifteen years since I've seen a $2 bill, though.