I might play, but I don't want any pennies. I'm on the committe to ban the penny.

actually, the idea to mail pennies came from the Billion Pennies Question. In order to accomplish some of the ideas brought on with the billion pennies, we would need a billion pennies in the first place. So people could mail their pennies into this project. Thereby ridding the world of pennies for a great cause.

Here are some questions:

Do you want to know how many can be mailed using just one first class stamp?

Would you accept an answer based on the average weight of a penny? [since coins in the same denomination can vary in weight]

yes. one first class stamp. Currently 37 cents. Also... here's a hint. Pennies weighed different before 1982. I will accept answers for the weight of pennies before 1982 and after (thereby having two different winners)

Should I show my work? Heh heh

Pennies post '82 weight approx. 1/10 of an ounce. A first class stamp will carry a one ounce letter for 37 cents. 10 pennies make 1 ounce.

The answer is 10 pennies.

Please don't mail 10 pennies to me.

On second thought, go ahead ... someone will prolly steal them anyway, or they will get jammed in the sorting machines ;o)

Ding Ding Ding. I will accept 10 pennies as correct. I have slightly different numbers. But I have also seen that 1/10th of an ounce elsewhere.

Anyone care to guess for pre-1982?

i collect pennies

Hooray! Thank you!!

Moose, you should have enough pre-1982 pennies to correctly guess.

Do you collect pennies to keep them out of the system?

are you referring to US pennies? i just got back from Canada, and their pennies seem a bit smaller. the UK also uses pennies.

funny side note - you know how we occasionally get Canadian quarters mixed in with our coins? in Canada, they kept giving me a US penny or two back with my change for things! i was quite outraged - what country was i in, anyway???

Yes. US pennies. If you're in Canada, shouldn't you be glad to get some of our money? cuz isn't our money worth more?

i've got a whole jar full of US pennies at home. i don't want more! especially from foreigners. i want THEIR money. how would they like it if i paid for things with US currency? actually you can do that in some Canadian stores. but you don't get the best exchange rate that way. ATMs give the best rate.

i think the reason that pennies had a different weight pre-1982 is because they were solid copper back then. now they are copper-plated nickel. cut one in half to see!

When I was in Canada I retrieved very little cash, but it isn't definitely the way to do, unless you use a credit card which always gives you great rates ... as long as you pay them off at the end of your trip.

is prolly really a word?

i love seeing foreign currency! i collect it. i cannot believe that i didn't even know what Canadian currency looked like until now. i mean, they are just next door! i have currency from Holland, France, England, Ireland [euros], Canada, and Spain.

I fell in love with the Canadian 5 dollar bill. I saved two from my recent trip to Vancouver. The bill is beautiful in its blue and beige and silver colors. One side has a picture of former Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier and The West Block of Parliment. But the real treat is the other side with a winter scene of people ice skating, sleding, and playing HOCKEY! Very cool! I wish our money was so cool! But at least it's worth more :o)

Growing up in Detroit, we were always getting Canadian coins as change, but I had never really seen the Canandian paper money [or remembered it from when I was a kid or jumping over to Windsor to have beer when I was 18] ... at least I don't remember it being as cool as it is.

Anyone have any ideas on what kind of creative display I can create for the two fivers I kept?

i kept forgetting that they have $1 and $2 as coins, not bills. so i kept paying with $5 bills, and getting all this coinage as change. i forgot to use the change in the first place to pay for stuff. so within 2 days, i had TONS of Canadian coins. my wallet was very heavy. i spent most of it, but managed to save at least one example of each coin denomination [1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 25 cent, 1 dollar, 2 dollar] for my collection.

Did you learn the slang for the coins early on? I laughed when I first saw the Canadian counterpart to the U.S. $1 Store which are called Loonie Toonies [Twonies], named for the $1 and $2 coins. I'll admit it took me a little more than a day to learn to spend my coins. They added up quickly!

that 5 dollar bill is very nice.

http://www.vancouver.hm/money.html

http://www.craigmarlatt.com/canada/images&downloads/downloads_misc_currency.html

the Canadian government's "money" section has no images of their money. Just lots of charts and numbers and crap.
http://canadianeconomy.gc.ca/english/economy/money.html

the guidebooks did tell us of "loonies" and "twoonies" but we never heard those monikers spoken aloud by the natives. in fact, one salesgirl in a store actually referred to the dollars as "bucks"!

i'm sorry to say i was never in possession of the $50 or $100 canadian bills.....

The largest bill I got were 20's from the ca$h machine at the airport.

Thanks to moose for the link to vancouver/money ... I intended on posting that so people could see the cool fiver :]

Is it more of an honor to have your face on the 100$ bill or on the 5$ bill?

a display for the bill, Tom, you could press it between two pieces of glass..and then place a frame around it...so it can stand alone on a desk or table.

it would look mighty handsome in your wallet.

"Is it more of an honor to have your face on the 100$ bill or on the 5$ bill?"

It depends on how you value honor. If you vale honor byt being recognize by fewer but more successful people, perhaps then the $100 bill would be more honorable. On the other hand, if you want to be in the hands of more people at more times, then perhaps being on the $5 would be more of an honor.

I'd go with the fiver myself.

I like both display ideas ... the glass and the wallet ... too bad I don't carry my cash in a wallet :[

I love that question! Which dollar bill would you want your face to be on? Well then again, many people wouldn't want their face on any bill. But imagining that you could... Twenties are nice. They are so ubitiquous with cash machines now. Anytime you get more money, it's a twenty. Twenty means gimme money. But then again, money, greed. icky. But putting those things aside... The two-dollar bill is nice. Everyone loves getting one of those. "oh look! it's a two-dollar bill!"

previous post about the 2-dollar bill: http://www.spudart.org/blogs/randomthoughts_comments/94_0_3_0_C/

i don't think they make two-dollar bills anymore.

I don't know much about Canadian government. I wonder if the faces on the bills reflect the their philosophy?

Were they for the working man? perhaps a 5$ bill resembles that?
or were they more distant and totalitarian? $100?...

The link moose provided has great information, including pix. Aside from the $20, which features Queen Elizabeth, the other bills feature former Primer Ministers. The backs seem to feature ideas, activities or animals of value to Canadians.