Plastic coins produced in Russia.

[ZenOps]

http://news.coinupdate.com/transnistria-to-introduce-plastic-circulation-coins-4441/

The coins are produced by the Moscow and St. Petersburg mints for the Republic of Transdnistria.

[Sugarphreak]

This is like your worst nightmare isn't it Zenops?

[n1zm0]

"Vitaly, lets test the plastic coins in Transnistria because they still think we care about them"

I guess it's a good test bed though, like half a million people in the entire country.

[eblend]

I think that kind of cool actually.

[01RedDX]

.

[ZenOps]

I'm impressed it took this long to get there.

Figuring that Norlisk nickel (the equivalent to Sudbury nickel in Canada) has got to be nearing end of mine life soon too.

Probably only the miners and Putin know for sure.

[e31]

BREAKING NEWS! : Las Vegas balks at Russia's plastic currency, citing "our plastic actually has value because, umm, it's backed by, umm... no further comments".

[oz388]

Coins were originally made of pure gold and silver, then some gold and silver, then copper, steel , alloys...and now plastic?! human race is hopeless...i don't want to trade my time and freedom to work in exchange for plastic!:whipped:

[coupesx]

Originally posted by oz388
Coins were originally made of pure gold and silver, then some gold and silver, then copper, steel , alloys...and now plastic?! human race is hopeless...i don't want to trade my time and freedom to work in exchange for plastic!:whipped:

Gold and silver are not intrinsically valuable, we give them value like anything else. And from a utilitarian standpoint, plastics have many more uses. Of course, they aren't very shiny...

Basically, you already trade your time and freedom in for plastic. It's not like bills are backed by a never ending supply of 'precious' metals.

[oz388]

Originally posted by coupesx


Gold and silver are not intrinsically valuable, we give them value like anything else. And from a utilitarian standpoint, plastics have many more uses. Of course, they aren't very shiny...

Basically, you already trade your time and freedom in for plastic. It's not like bills are backed by a never ending supply of 'precious' metals.

I'm sure gold and silver has value and much more valuable than plastic is because of its production cost.

I agree that all currency r bs, now we don't even get anything from trading our time and freedom to work, they just type some numbers to our account so we can see from our computer screen and everyone is happy. We all brain washed to believe we have what we saw on the computer screen, however I'm sure all our hard working savings can be gone in a sec if the "big guy" wants that way...

[Masked Bandit]

Meh, it's a natural progression. All currency is simply a representation of imaginary value anyway. A toonie could be made out of old hockey pucks in Canada and as long as everyone agreed on it's buying power, it wouldn't really matter to me.

[ZenOps]

Thats just it, agreeing on what a dollar is worth amongst everyone is very difficult without some sort of anchor. What is a $100 US bill worth to Putin, if they simply freeze and confiscate all electronic US dollars he owned (several billion BTW) What is a plastic Ruble worth to an american? What is a Canuck dollar worth to an american?

If I brought a bag full of plastic rubles to a exchange house, do you think I could get US $100 bills in return?

If I bought $115 Canadian iron cored loonies to the US, are you absolutely sure that you could get a $100 US bill at an exchange house?

I don't place the same value on a 1981 nickel compared to a 2001 nickel because one is iron and the other *isn't fake* by design.

Nor do I place the same value on a 2011 loonie and a 2013 loonie. I don't place the same value on a 1967 Canadian dollar coin compared to a 1968 either.

Canadian dollar:

1935–1967 23.33 grams 80% silver, 20% copper
1968–1986 15.62 grams 99.9% nickel
1987-2011 7.00 grams 91.5% nickel, 8.5% bronze
2012-date 6.27 grams Iron core, brass plating (unspecified)

By spot price, a modern loonie is worth about 920x (92,000%) less than a 2011 loonie (which has been worth about 35 cents in metal value at peak)

BTW: To me, an Iron dollar is worth significantly less than a plastic dollar. Iron being around $13 per ton for most of the last decade, where oil (used to make plastic) has been around $100 per 306 pounds (barrel).

[CapnCrunch]

Originally posted by ZenOps
Thats just it, agreeing on what a dollar is worth amongst everyone is very difficult without some sort of anchor. What is a $100 US bill worth to Putin, if they simply freeze and confiscate all electronic US dollars he owned (several billion BTW) What is a plastic Ruble worth to an american? What is a Canuck dollar worth to an american?


If I brought a bag full of plastic rubles to a exchange house, do you think I could get US $100 bills in return?

IF YOUR BAG OF COINS WAS WORTH $100 USD, YES

If I bought $115 Canadian iron cored loonies to the US, are you absolutely sure that you could get a $100 US bill at an exchange house?

YES

I don't place the same value on a 1981 nickel compared to a 2001 nickel because one is iron and the other *isn't fake* by design.

NOBODY CARES

Nor do I place the same value on a 2011 loonie and a 2013 loonie. I don't place the same value on a 1967 Canadian dollar coin compared to a 1968 either.

NOBODY CARES

Canadian dollar:

1935–1967 23.33 grams 80% silver, 20% copper
1968–1986 15.62 grams 99.9% nickel
1987-2011 7.00 grams 91.5% nickel, 8.5% bronze
2012-date 6.27 grams Iron core, brass plating (unspecified)

NOBODY CARES

By spot price, a modern loonie is worth about 920x (92,000%) less than a 2011 loonie (which has been worth about 35 cents in metal value at peak)

NOBODY CARES

[ZenOps]

I do.

Money, and what trades hands as money, is the single most important thing in modern life. You can judge a society by what they carry in their pockets more than the roof over their head.

It can be said, that people are more likely to spend if they think that what they hold in their hand is next to worthless.

But the opposite side of the coin, is that people are much less likely to work for things that they think are worthless.

Iron coins are worthless, hence - why bother to work to acquire them?

I blame Nixon.

[BigMass]

Originally posted by coupesx


Gold and silver are not intrinsically valuable

gold and silver are elements with unique properties that cannot be duplicated. They have uses which are unmatched by other elements. They cannot be stably created or destroyed apart from the collision of neutron stars, are rare and take work and effort to extract. If gold and silver have no intrinsic value, then nothing has intrinsic value. You need to recheck your definition.

[Sugarphreak]

...

[ZenOps]

All paper bills were considered IOU's on the coinage up until about 1971.

Meaning, if you dropped a $100 bill on the table at a bank in 1933 you would have got 5 ounces of gold back in coinage (yes, that was the $100 equivalent back then)

If you dropped a $100 bill on the table in 1967, you would have got 3.75 pounds in silver back (yes, that was the $100 equivalent back then too)

In 1981, if you dropped $100 on the table, you could have got 20 pounds of nickel or 68.5 pounds of copper.

M0 or base money, is considered a real fungible asset (gold, silver, nickel, copper) upon which M1, paper money is created upon usually at a 10:1 or 100:1 (aruguably, its more like 10,000:1) ratio.

IE: A local branch bank will usually hold several hundred thousands of electronic and paper dollars compared to a few hundred pounds of copper/nickel assets to back it up.

Why is this important? Imaginary dollars can be assigned any value, no anchor means money can be created (and destroyed) at will. By burning dollar bills (in reality or electronically) one can effectively ensure that anyone that owes money - never has enough money to payback a loan (mathematical certainty if you have the power to destroy money)

Coinage cannot be destroyed by keystroke or by fire. To owe someone $100 in paper is *completely* different than owing someone $100 in coinage to be paid back - say decades later.