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#31580 11/25/03 09:14 PM
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This may be old news to some, but there will be some new 5-cent pieces in commemoration of the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark's expedition:
http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/index.cfm?action=nickel_series

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A worthy commemoration for a purchase that made a huge increase in American territory.

At least the U.S. mint keeps coins the same size. Over here the sizes seem to change with alarming regularity these days.

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In Colombia, the old (probably withdrawn from circulation by now) 5 and 10 peso coins were the size of American dollars when I was a child.

The singles were the size of an American 25 cent piece except half a millimeter thicker, so you couldn't use them in an American coin phone. [Linked Image]

The single peso was then discontinued and the 5 and 10s were then shrunk down to the size of nickles (10 peso) and dimes (5 peso) presumably to save on brass or whatever their alloy is. All Colombian coins ranging from the 5 peso to the 100 peso coin have the same design and same color. Just size varies. Guess it makes it cheaper to make. The 200 and 500 have their own designs.

Currently the value of the peso is almost C$3,000 to US$1, rounding up. Precisely it's C$2,800 to US$1. Denominations that used to be bills were then converted to coins (e.g.: 500 pesos, 100 pesos, etc.). Now bills are for amounts in the thousands.

I guess as the value of the metal is more than the face value of the coin...... [Linked Image]

Now if only the US Mint would start giving tours to the general public again.....did they ever?

I wish American coins would have fancy things like holes or weird shapes (squares, flower-outline) or even the thing that Canadian two-dollar coins have -- a slug of one alloy inset in the ring made of another alloy....I also wish our paper money were color coded....blue, pink, green, gray, light brown, purple, etc. Would make it much easier to sort. [Linked Image]

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Now bills are for amounts in the thousands.

Do they call these bills "Kilopesos"?

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I wish American coins would have fancy things like holes or weird shapes (squares, flower-outline) or even the thing that Canadian two-dollar coins have -- a slug of one alloy inset in the ring made of another alloy....I also wish our paper money were color coded....blue, pink, green, gray, light brown, purple, etc. Would make it much easier to sort.
Nah... Real money is green! Foreign money looks really strange. And if our penny had a hole in the middle, people would be using them as washers. How often did you use pennies for metal shims? :-)

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If pennies had a hole in them they couldn't have been used behind plug fuses in the old days.

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Speaking of holes in pennies... At times I'v been a little bit of a tightwad, to the point of spending hours of my time to save a few dollars. I've since loosened up and while I look for good deals, I consider my time before I shop around too much. Anyway, back to the penny. I once needed some washers for a tool box and for convienence and to save money, I drilled a 1/4" hole in some pennies to make them. The pennies cost $.01 ea, a washer would be about $.05. Well to me if I could save 4 cents each, it was a no brainer. [Linked Image]

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Which brings me back to the nickels.

What was that saying about squeezing a nickel? [Linked Image]

[Linked Image from 65.108.216.53]

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I don't know about the US mint, but the Canadian mint located in Winnipeg Manitoba gives tours for $2.00 a person.

They have a glassed walkway looking over the production floor so you can see how all the different machines punch the slugs out, then stamp the design on them.

Winnipeg does all the general circulation coins, Ottawa Ontario has another mint that does all the coins that go in the collector sets. They also do tours at that mint site.

More info on the Winnipeg tour here: http://www.mint.ca/en/about_the_mint/locations/Winnipeg_tours.htm?cookie%5Ftest=1

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mbhydro:

Thanks for the info. The US Mint gives tours only in Philadelphia and Denver .

I grew up in Philly, and I remember visiting the mint. Same kind of setup, that is, looking through the glass. Apparently, the employees must pass through some sort of extremely sensitive metal detector at the end of the day [Linked Image]

What ever happened with the stolen mint die from the Loon dollars? (Or am I confusing something else?)

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Thinkgood
It was not the loonie (Cdn $1 coin) die that went missing but the first choice for that coin.

If I remember properly the first choice design was two voyagers in a canoe. The story was that it was sent by normal courier to the mint but never showed up and has never been seen since. Probably show up in twenty years in the dead letter office.

A more secure method was used when the two dollar coin die (aka the toonie) was sent to the mint.

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