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Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

Our mental model and relation to money is incredibly amusing.

E.G:

I travel a lot, and often end up with a few coins from countries remining in my bags. I have friends of mine in the same situation, and they all have "that drawer" filled with various coins that they will one day use again.

Me, I put them in the trash can. Every time I do that, people look at me like I killed a puppy.

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And I put them in a wooden box and have a treasure hoard. Maybe one day I will bury it for future discovery.

That's a good reason :)

The difference is children. Children LOVE coins from other countries. If you are likely to run into kids, keeping the strange coins is a plus. It's like keeping a seashell you found on the beach.

When you're at the airport, leaving country X, and you have some coins in X's currency that you have no more use for, give them to a low-paid worker there - a janitor or somebody. To you, it's just as if you'd throw it in the trash. But to the janitor...

When i was growing up, my parents kept the loose change from their travels in a little wooden treasure chest.

As a small child, I found it one of the coolest things ever.

I would keep them in case I ever wanted to teach my children about the nature of nations and money (indeed I've currently got a little tin doing just that).

That's a very good reason to do so. I don't want children so I'm never going to do it. But basically, art is the best reason for it.

Most international airports have a charity donation coin box specifically for this purpose because foreign exchange kiosks usually won't accept coins.

You could always put them somewhere like under a trash can and post a "free" listing on craigslist, or something like that. I do that occasionally with things I don't want to deal with, but don't want to throw away. Eventually they'll make their way back into useful circulation.

Some charities take odd coins. Better than the trash bin.

The time and energy that will be used to process said coins will excess their face value.

There are people with nothing better to do who enjoy sorting old coins.

Personally I prefer untangling pieces of string or yarn. I don't normally have time for it, but on the rare occasions that I've had nothing "better" to do I've really enjoyed it.

If that were true then the charities wouldn't take them in the first place. They're (ahem) not doing it for charity.

Destroying coins and bills is illegal. While destroying a few coins won't have interpol chasing you, it's still illegal and the "right" thing to do would be to exchange them, or just give them to someone else who might pass through the country.

> would be to exchange them

Not all coins can be exchanged in your own countries. Good luck with your CFA. A lot of exchange desks don't even accept small amounts or coins.

> just give them to someone else who might pass through the country.

Yeah, let's make a todo list entry for the equivalent 1.37 dollars.

> it's still illegal and the "right" thing

I have much more important right things as my priority. Like cooking, recycling, smiling, exercicing, reading, sleeping, argumenting on HN...

The waste of productive time this would entail is far worse than the waste of a few bucks.

See what I meant about the reactions of others ? We had immediat visceral reactions that it's money and should not be wasted. No matter how realistic it is, money is precious.

It's like this scene in 2012 where they burn notes to keep warm, but for a moment they hesitate.

Would throwing coins into trash be considered destroying them? They are physically intact and can be used. Those laws often come because sometimes coins are worth more in raw metal than their nominal value.

Destroying coins and bills is illegal.

That's far from universal. So it depends which county's currency you're talking about.

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