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I smell a Gee Whillikers....


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http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/canada-issues-glow-dark-dinosaur-quarter-173052860.html

Something about this story reminds me of our own GW...as if he might have a hand in bringing such a delicious concept to light. It seems to be whimsical, silly, and downright...well, awesome. I can't imagine the United States ever doing something this cute. These might be just the thing for kids this Christmas.

So Canada does away with the penny, and I wonder how many pennies it will take to make these things? Can't be cheap, but then I doubt if they are anything more than collector items. I guess they won't fit in a candy machine and that ain't sweet.

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The Royal Canadian Mint has been taking centre stage in the world for a while now, especially with coin production. Some of the commemorative and special occasion coins are very, very well done, including quarters with pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness, red maple leafs, and various other colours that are somehow embedded into the coin and don't seem to fade ever. They apparently are contracted by a few different countries to do their coinage too, due to their state of the art equipment and ideas.

Our new bills are pretty cool too.

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Our bills have always been different colours. I hate it when I'm in the States and have to spend that extra second or two to figure out the denomination of a bill when I pull it out of my wallet. With the colours, it's immediately obvious what bill you have: blue is a five, purple is a ten, green is a twenty, pink is a fifty and brown is a hundred. The new bills are pretty cool though. Lots more anti-counterfieting features of course, and the bills are made of some kind of plastic polymer. It's amazing, almost impossible to tear or rip and can be folded again and again without creasing. Lots of areas of the bill are see-through (not really that new - been done for more than a decade in many places) to stop photo-copying of bills, and holograms all over the place.

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I agree with Gee. When I went to Vancouver having C$ bill denominations in different colors was excellent. I saved a whole set of C$ bills when I came back. Now I'm all set to pay that stupid airport tax they have in Vancouver. Or is that everywhere in Canada? Oh, one other thing is that the Canadians have mostly excised the penny coin. Stores round down any amounts from 1c to 4c to the next lower even 5c amount. Cool.

Colin :icon_geek:

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Presuming its the same, Australia developed the polymer that is used in the new bills.

Sadly it hasn't stopped the counterfeiters, despite having a clear window and a metal strip.

We've had the plastic money for some time now and the plastic does age and eventually the bills will crease and tear.

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There's only one comment I have on what Gee said.

Hey, Gee? It's COLOR. No superfluous 'u'. Get over yourselves up there! It isn't England. We expect such behavior from them, but you guys are Cananda, for crying out loud. A proud and independent country. Get some self-respect. Leave those silly ways behind!

No 'u'. Remember that. You're in our neighborhood. No 'u' in that, either.

C

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Oh, one other thing is that the Canadians have mostly excised the penny coin. Stores round down any amounts from 1c to 4c to the next lower even 5c amount. Cool.

Colin :icon_geek:

This hasn't quite happened yet. They've just announced they're stopping production on the penny, but I doubt we'll see any noticeable drop in the pennies in our pockets for a year or longer. No store has moved over to the rounding yet, though they will. There's already vocal debate, naturally, on all of this, with people worried about stores using this to surreptitiously raise prices.

By the way, debit card, credit card, and cheque (Yes Cole - cheque, not check) payments will still all be to the penny. Only cash payments will be rounded.

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colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour colour

It's not England, Canada, or Australia's fault that English teachers never wanted to go to America's colonies, and given the way things have ended up, home-schooling should probably have been viewed more suspiciously. :lipssealed:

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You want a really odd spelling? "Queue," as though the French couldn't decide when to stop adding letters. :wink: In French, it's a queue, [ kø ]; In English, it's a queue, like a cue or kew, [ kju: ] or [ kjIw ]. The funny spellings in brackets are IPA for language geeks.

I like the Canadian designs. There've been talks about redesigning American money, using another color or two, but there's been a lot of conservative resistance, as though it's sacrilegious to change the paper bills. (They've been changed many times since the USA started.) It's been argued that color coding helps people, whether with bad eyesight or not, to easily distinguish paper money denominations. The newer bills introduced sometime after 2000 do have additional color usage and other anti-counterfeiting measures.

About the US copper penny: I won't particularly mind if they drop the penny, but I hope they'd use a copper coin of some kind. Why? It's easy to distinguish, it's pretty, and it does have value. The way prices are going, I wouldn't be surprised if they have to change the coins and bills, adjust the values (divide by 10, maybe) or some other scheme, or we won't have much use for pennies or nickels...or anything under a dollar.

One of the main objections to altering the US coins has been the need to change all those coin-operated vending machines and coin sorters. Sure, that's an issue, but if all they did was drop one and add another one or two coins, it would work. It's just a matter of swapping out the coin sorter gadget or parts of it...for every such machine in use. Heck, even drink and snack machines now take bills, so why is this *really* a problem?

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There's only one comment I have on what Gee said.

Hey, Gee? It's COLOR. No superfluous 'u'. Get over yourselves up there! It isn't England. We expect such behavior from them, but you guys are Cananda, for crying out loud. A proud and independent country. Get some self-respect. Leave those silly ways behind!

No 'u'. Remember that. You're in our neighborhood. No 'u' in that, either.

C

Watch yor moth, Cole. I dobt our fonders cold even cont, mch less spell.

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