Posted on 12/30/2010 1:22:47 AM PST by thecodont
In a small, windowless room in the bowels of the Westin St. Francis hotel on Union Square, Rob Holsen washes the hotel's money.
Every penny, nickel, dime and quarter.
Three times a week, Holsen soaps, rinses, dries and rolls money. He estimates that $1.5 million in spare change has passed through his hands in the past 20 years.
"That's a lot of pieces of money," Holsen said as he began a recent cleaning.
Since 1938, all the coins the St. Francis acquires through its cafe, restaurants and bars - tarnished by the grime of the outside world - have made their way through the cleaning closet before leaving the hotel bright and shiny.
It's believed the St. Francis is the only hotel to continue the practice, which started in the 1930s as a courtesy to guests.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/26/MNHU1GT8K4.DTL#ixzz19aHMZWy7
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Cleaning coins also completely destroys their value as a collectors item.
So does circulating them.
So does the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. They’ll be plastic pretty soon. ( Unless the plastic becomes more valuable then the coin )
IIRC, they used to wash them with lead shot to polish them up.
I bet they don’t use eeeeeeeevil lead any more...
Now that’s why I call money laundering!
Either by hyper-inflation to the point where small change is meaningless, or by printing 1¢ notes.
It's not unprecedented, somewhere or another I have some 1¢ Hong Kong bank notes. They're undersized, about 1 X 1½" and only printed on one side
What can be corrupted, will be corrupted, only sooner and quicker than you can imagine.
Not so much if it is just soap and water.
Our economy must be OK (despite all other indications) if we can pay people to do this; then again, I doubt the hotel is a place where the average American would be staying.
The process begins when the general cashier sends racks of rolled coins to Holsen, who empties the change into a repurposed silver burnisher.
Along with the coins, the burnisher is filled with water, buckshot to knock the dirt off, and a healthy pour of 20 Mule Team Borax soap. After three hours of swishing the coins around, Holsen uses a metal ice scoop to pour the loot into a perforated roast pan that sifts out the buckshot.
. . . .
[O]nce-rusted copper pennies turn into shimmering bronze coins. Quarters look like sparkling silver bits.
But I suppose they've found that it works.
It’s time once again to trot out my currency and coinage reform proposal.
But before I do, I’m surprised that they aren’t using ultrasonic to clean the coins. Also, I can advise that if you have tarnished old silver coins, you can remove tarnish (from any silver item) by putting them in a pot of hot water with a sheet of aluminum foil on the bottom, and a good shake of salt and baking powder in it. Don’t do anything to collectible coins, however.
Now for my proposal:
Given that there has been ample inflation on the order of 10 since the last change, and we have an excessive array of confusing coins and low-value currency, it is time for a practical simplification.
First, denominations need to proceed in a proportional way without large value ratios or crowded ratios. The classic 1-5-10-50-100... progression with ratios of 2.0-5.0 is ideal as a minimum, with denominations of 2, 20, etc. being optional for important valuations.
Second, we want to avoid coins of such low value that they are more trouble than they are worth. Economic waste occurs with the extra time wasted dealing with needlessly small coins. A dime is worth less than a minute of labor at minimum wages, and no currency transaction requires anything smaller than this denomination. The penny and the half-cent served well as the smallest denominations when their values were that of today’s dime. (Note to any economic imbeciles: electronic transactions are often conducted in smaller units than our smallest coin, and that cash registers have been “rounding” - without bias up or down - to the nearest small coin for sales tax purposes for generations. Google “sales tax rounding” if you have doubts and read a few articles).
Third, we want to set the coin/currency transition at a practical level that avoids our wallets being overstuffed with small bills, or our pockets with too many coins. Coins should be suitable for purchases like a magazine, a coffee, a lunch, or a brief cab ride.
Fourth, the ratio between the largest and smallest coin should be limited to a practical factor. Consider that the economy functions effectively with coins at 0.05, 0.10, and 0.25, with pennies treated as trash, and larger coins generally not used. That is a factor of 5 between the largest and smallest coin. A factor of 10-50 may be ideal, and a factor of 100 (as in actual current coinage) is excessive.
Fifth, we need bills of adequately high value for large cash purchases (consider the largest Euro note has a value of about 6.5 times that of the largest US note.)
Sixth, coins should be sized approximately proportional to their value for ease of recognition and use.
The proposal:
Coins:
$0.10 (slightly smaller than the current dime)
$0.50 (slightly smaller than the current nickel, larger than the penny)
$1.00 (slightly smaller than the current quarter dollar, larger than the nickel)
$5.00 (slightly smaller than the current half-dollar) Or it could be set at $2 to avoid overlap with a $5 note.
Currency Notes:
$5 (optional)
$10
$20 (optional)
$50
$100
$500
Our current 6 coins are replaced with 4.
Our current 7 notes are replaced with 4-6.
If you want to talk about making coins out of silver or gold, I’m even more enthusiastic:
$1000 gold coin (1 oz)
$500 gold coin (1/2 oz)
$100 gold coin (1/10 oz)
$20 silver coin (1 oz)
$10 silver coin (1/2 oz)
$2 silver coin (1/10 oz)
$1 copper or base metal coin (1/2 oz)
$0.50 copper or base metal coin (1/4 oz)
$0.10 copper or base metal coin (1/10 oz)
The article does state buck shot is used along with borax even today.
Thanks.
Coins:
1-2-5-10-20-50¢ All one common metal or alloy.
Monotonic increase in size as you suggested, alternate values smooth edged and reeded.
Banknotes:
$1-2-5-10-20-50-100-1000
Banknote size increases with value. Size increases alternate between height and width.
Reset the value of the money to be 10X stronger than today, Constitutionally limit/eliminate inflation.
Um wouldn’t it be cheaper to just get brand new rolls of coins to replace the circulated stuff they gather if they are so into clean coinage?
Have you paused to envision what that mess would do to wallets -- and the size/design thereof? ...and, by extension -- of your hip pocket...?
I’m open to other options to make the bills easily distinguishable to a blind person.
Say square corners vs notched corners vs beveled corners vs rounded corners?
Sounds like a worthwhile project!
Wonder if bumps of extra paper-pulp bulk could be embossed-in to create permanently-raised or thickened Braille numbers? That would also make counterfeiters' jobs harder, I would think...
Could metallic/magnetic content in those bumps also aid machine readability?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.