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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

I actually like paying with coins in other countries, but dollar coins are too big, and we need $5 $10 $20 coins too. I'd love to be able to leave my wallet at home sometimes and just stick a $20 coin or two in my pocket. I'm less likely to drop a coin than a folded or crumpled up bill in my pocket, but I'm way more likely to lose a coin in my pocket than a bill in my wallet.

There's no point to having both a wallet full of bills and cards and a pocket full of coins though.

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For the currencies which I am most familiar with:

* The largest 'normal' British coin is worth 2 GBP (~2.50 USD), with the smallest note (in common circulation) being 5 GBP (~6.35 USD). * The largest Euro coin is worth 2 EUR (2.18 USD), smallest note 5 EUR (5.45 USD).

However it's becoming increasing irrelevant for me personally - on the rare occasions I'm required to pay by cash I tend to just put the change into my pocket, and deal with it when I eventually come to wash the clothes.

Making any changes to currencies at this stage in time doesn't quite feel like rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic yet, but sounds like you could burn a lot of political will for little advantage.

Changing the coins could be justified as keeping them relevant for the future, otherwise they become irrelevant through inflation.

When ½p coins were introduced with decimalization, a pint of milk cost 5p — the smallest coin bought 57ml of milk.

With milk now 90p/pt, you now get only 6ml for the smallest coin. We could reasonably scrap 1p, 2p and 5p coins.

Even a $2 coin would be a huge improvement.

To be honest as a European I always envy the US and their $1 bills. Its a hassle to always have to carry around all these €1 and €2 coins which one invariably receives by the end of the day.

I don't visit the USA often, but I've found $1 bills to be dirty and worn — it's much easier for vending machines to accept a coin.

If you don't like carrying excess coins, you need to hand some over when you pay. If the bill is €11.85, hand over €12 or €22 rather than €15 or €20.

How can you hand over €12 or €22 if you're not holding excess coins?

Up to €4 (in 1s and 2s) is not excess.

Depends on your definition of excess I guess.

They can be very dirty thats true, but i just dont like carrying large amounts of coins. They all end up in a huge box in my home at the end of the day. I’d rather have some €2 bills. Anyway, Im paying much more by card now these days so this issue is going away slowly.

Today for a 3,30€ bus fare I handed over 4,40€. Lightening my pocket of coins is simple enough, but for physical transaction efficiency it assumes that both customer and recipient can do simple math in their heads. Your local educational system may or may not provide appropriate guarantees of this.

I used to (20+ years ago, now) buy a few rolls of dollar coins a week from my bank. Amusingly, they added them to their currency order just for me - the bank manager informally made me promise I'd keep asking for them - that's how low the demand was. I enjoyed them for parking, and vending machines, and buying coffee. Even at the time, however, I thought they'd made a mistake by not making them $2 coins, instead.

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