$ Foreign Currency Collecting Thread - This isn't a currency exchange thread.

[Alex Hogendorp]

This is a discussion regarding collecting coins and bills regarding silver, gold, historical values and the person, event and place featured on the bill (Mao Zedong, Nikola Tesla, Simon Bolivar, Queen Elizabeth II, etc.)

Here's some examples. Of many bills I happen to own.

 

[Unamused Bounty Hunter]

I don't try to collect foreign currency but I've managed to get a few coins over the years from past jobs and purchasing things online. For some reason I have a few yen coins from buying from Japanese sellers.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

Outside of euro coins. The euro might be the ugliest currency in the world. The American dollar at least has history, symbolism and characters. Euro banknotes political correctness as money.

 

[ChaosReignsOnSomeSaturday]

Apparently my bank can order foreign currency at a one to one rate for an exchange for me, and I just pay a small fee for the overall thing. So theoretically I can collect foreign currency from the comfort of my own home.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

Apparently my bank can order foreign currency at a one to one rate for an exchange for me, and I just pay a small fee for the overall thing. So theoretically I can collect foreign currency from the comfort of my own home.

I converted around USD$1500 into foreign Monopoly money a couple of years ago, and it was very fun to go to the bank and have the guy hand me a thick envelope of cash.

 

[Whitney Houston On Crack]

I currently have in my wallet:

- 100 US Dollars
- 200 Euro
- 1200 Turkish Lira
- 70 Bulgarian Lev
- 100 Ukrainian Hryvnia
- 20 Serbian Dinar
- 5000 Japanese Yen
- 20 Israeli Shekels
- 100 Indian Rupees
- 5 Russian Rubles

- Some Macedonian coins, they are really fun, they have a cat on them. No notes unfortunately.

I also used to have 20 Swiss Francs, but I spent them.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

I have a pretty sizeable collection, that I should really get around to organizing and making sure is well kept to be honest, but it is mostly made up of obsolete currency from my own country. It was started by my great-grandfather and kept in the family. Might dox it later.

Brazil went full retard with it's fiscal policy in the 20th century. We swapped currency like 7 times, from Réis to Cruzeiros to Cruzados to Cruzeiro Novo and so on and so forth until we FINALLY solved the issue in mid 1990s with the Real (which is technically the sigular of the old Réis) after the Real Plan and what I can only describe as "economic chemotherapy" where the presidenty straight up froze everyone's savings account. Fun times.

Current money looks pretty ok, likely fun for collectors if I had to guess. We sorta burned out from putting people in the money after so many designs so people just went "you know what fuck it put animals" so the bills have important/well known Brazilian fauna. This also led to some bills being know by their animal sometimes with a "onça" (Jaguar) for 50$ and a Macaw for 10$. Recently they made a bigger denomination 200$ bill and put the Lobo Guará (Maned Wolf) on it which is a long legged wolf that looks really funky like a fox-wolf. We also have monke on the money. We updated the looks in 2010 to the new one, same money just visual update + a size ordering.

The OG bill, symbol of the plan. No longer in circulation, only coins for 1R$ now. Collectors item even in Brazil.



Monke bill. Feat. Golden Lion Tamarin



The big cat (Jaguar)



The newest addition, the funny wolf. It has a really funny bark and legs for days (Maned Wolf)



Of my own collection the most interesting pieces I have are some precious coins and a few of the actually foreign ones. A Turkish Lira note, a polish Zloty coin from all the way back in 1949 (no fucking idea how my grandad got it, it's almost light enough to float on water lmao commie "money") two silver Réis coins from Imperial Brazil and the one my dad keeps on a special box decoration: A Sovereign from Queen Victoria era (gold 1£). Pretty baller.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

A nifty detail about the real is that the banknotes are different sizes, probably to help the blind but also as an anti-counterfeiting measure. Some newer notes have braille printing, too.

 

[Zdzislaw Beksinski]

I'm far from being a numismatist, but if I get a hold of any interesting coins I will keep them, especially if it's those silly commemorative €2 coins. Technically they're all the same currency, but they're foreign -- that's gotta count for something, right?

Top 9 are from Italy, then there's one from France coupled with one from Austria, 3 from Germany, and 3 from Greece.


Couple of not-so-common "regular" euro coins:

Really would like to get a hold of the Vatican's Wojtyła coins, as well as some of their commemorative coins.

Random coins and a couple of dead currencies, reverse and obverse:


My bad for the quality of these, it's pretty dumb to say but I never realized before how hard it is to take good pictures of coins.

 

[ChaosReignsOnSomeSaturday]

I actually want to get some Papiermark. Ideally I'd like to collect one of each note. I really love hyper inflation bills. Something about seeing actual paper money with the word "Trillion" printed on just makes me giddy. Like collecting actually monopoly money.

 

[ChaosReignsOnSomeSaturday]

I'm far from being a numismatist, but if I get a hold of any interesting coins I will keep them, especially if it's those silly commemorative €2 coins. Technically they're all the same currency, but they're foreign -- that's gotta count for something, right?

Top 9 are from Italy, then there's one from France coupled with one from Austria, 3 from Germany, and 3 from Greece.
View attachment 5350440

Couple of not-so-common "regular" euro coins:
View attachment 5350444
Really would like to get a hold of the Vatican's Wojtyła coins, as well as some of their commemorative coins.

Random coins and a couple of dead currencies, reverse and obverse:
View attachment 5350456

My bad for the quality of these, it's pretty dumb to say but I never realized before how hard it is to take good pictures of coins.

So can you exchange dead currency for anything?

 

[Walrus and Carpenter 2.0]

So can you exchange dead currency for anything?

It's generally worth scrap value, but illegal to scrap in its country of origin. If the coins are small enough you could load them into a shotgun.

 

[Zdzislaw Beksinski]

So can you exchange dead currency for anything?

With some exceptions, like countries that have changed their currencies and will still exchange the old currency for the new one, typically the value of a dead currency would be zero, so you can't exchange them for anything -- best you could do is either melt the metal (depending on what material they're made of, and other legal issues with doing so) and make something off of that, or just hang on to what you have.

The drachmes and lire in the picture are a great example of dead currencies that no longer have any value, you cannot exchange them anymore. Sometimes if the old coins look anything like newer coins, people will try to get smart and rip you off by giving you those old coins, banking on the fact that they're so similar that most people wouldn't even think twice to check their change. It's happened to me a few times with old drachmes that look like 2 euro cents.

 

[Whitney Houston On Crack]

In the mid 90's my granduncle had a huge table in his living room with a glass covering. Underneath the glass there were all kinds of money from countries that didn't exist anymore. Apparently he worked as a sailor in his youth and had collected A LOT of foreign notes.

I remember he had East German Marks, Soviet Rubles and even Biafran Pounds. I was only a dumb kid and didn't realize how rare and impressive that was.

Eventually that table broke. I don't know if he still keeps the notes. He used to collect a lot of cool shit. Like swords used in WW1, old cigarette ad posters, board games from the 1800's and so on.

He also loved to fight people in bars and to cheat on his wife. I've got to hit him up sometime and see how he is doing. He is probably pushing 90.

 

[ChaosReignsOnSomeSaturday]

With some exceptions, like countries that have changed their currencies and will still exchange the old currency for the new one, typically the value of a dead currency would be zero, so you can't exchange them for anything -- best you could do is either melt the metal (depending on what material they're made of, and other legal issues with doing so) and make something off of that, or just hang on to what you have.

The drachmes and lire in the picture are a great example of dead currencies that no longer have any value, you cannot exchange them anymore. Sometimes if the old coins look anything like newer coins, people will try to get smart and rip you off by giving you those old coins, banking on the fact that they're so similar that most people wouldn't even think twice to check their change. It's happened to me a few times with old drachmes that look like 2 euro cents.

I'd like to get some drachmes and lire, are they tough to come by?

 

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

I have coins from Canada (penny is defunct now, unfortunately), the US, Korea, Japan, China, HK, Macau, Thailand, Vietnam and Phillippines.

 

[User names must be unique]

I have a fair few coins from around the world, can we take a second to determine the best coin orientation for me it's medallic.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

I have coins from Canada (penny is defunct now, unfortunately), the US, Korea, Japan, China, HK, Macau, Thailand, Vietnam and Phillippines.

I still have my fair share of Canadian pennies I kept since they abolished it 10 years ago.

I actually want to get some Papiermark. Ideally I'd like to collect one of each note. I really love hyper inflation bills. Something about seeing actual paper money with the word "Trillion" printed on just makes me giddy. Like collecting actually monopoly money.

I own a 100 German Empire Mark from 1910 and holy shit is it huge. The largest bill I own so far. Most bills are never this large nowadays so imagine my surprise.