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Comment by quadrifoliate | Hacker News Reader

One of the few remaining cases where the USA is truly the best in the world. Full backward compatibility for your currency is an awesome thing.

I guess these days it's kind of an expression of strength that the US has the resources to hunt down and stop counterfeiters, and pursue them through the world's financial systems if necessary.

Meanwhile, given that the UK is reportedly bringing back imperial measures [1], they will probably do something silly like deprecate another set of existing coinage and bring back shillings.

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[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-wants-revive-imperi...

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It isn't full. If you show up with $100k of 80s-era Benjamins you will quickly realize they are not quite as fungible as you think.

Are they legal tender or not? I don't care if some picky person doesn't want to take them, that can also happen for other reasons like them not having change or such.

If you show up to a store with a stack of old notes, this will look very suspicious even if they are “legal tender.”

Banks usually send old notes back to the Fed when they are found. They will notice an increase in old notes being returned and investigate as well.

So you might get away with this for a short amount of time.

They are legal tender. They are not fully backward compatible.

Not if you consider the fact that the USA has 10x the rate of counterfeit notes: 1/4,000[0] Vs 1/40,000[1]. Obviously there are other factors too but this is likely one of the reasons for deprecating old notes like this.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_United_States_cu...

[1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/banknote

I in no way can see pre decimalization currency returning, it was highly complex, and has been gone since the 60's. The only ones who have working knowledge of it are pensioners.

Suppose I buy 3 stone, 5 pounds, 8 ounces of tomatoes priced at 4 shillings per pound. How much do I have to pay?

Suppose I use 1 stone, 12 pounds and 10 ounces in a (large) ratatouille. What weight of tomatoes do I have left?

Nah: imperial isn't coming back. The big food market in the centre of the city sells small fruit and veg in plastic bowls 'a pound a bowl' is the tarrif and the quantity in the bowl changes according to price. Larger items (cauliflowers) are priced typically by number so 2 for £1.50 or whatever.

That's a lot of tomatoes. I'm surprised you could find enough pickers to pick them.

You might see meat and dry goods being sold in pounds, like the states does, but like, I cannot imagine going back to 240 pence to the GBP, just inflation alone.

I think that works out to 9 pounds, 10 schillings, and like 3 pence however for the tomatoes.

You can have imperial without the stone though.

Yes, I think the decimal 1p is on the way out - at least one coffee bar in town is pricing their wares to one decimal place of pounds. Let alone the old penny (1/240th of a pound).

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