Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 8 Jan 2013 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101114/23415511867/dailydirt-big-money-small-change.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101114/23415511867/dailydirt-big-money-small-change.shtml before, as well as Canada's plans to actually put an end to its penny. Some folks really hate these small denomination coins, but really large denominations aren't too popular, either. Here are just a few links on some money that won't see circulation.

• The US Treasury is technically allowed to mint platinum coins of any denomination -- but at least one lawmaker wants to prevent the possibility of a trillion dollar coin. TL;DR -- does this bill prevent the minting of a half-trillion coin? [url]
• There's less than a month left for folks to hoard Canadian pennies because starting February 4th, the Royal Canadian mint will no longer distribute 1-cent coins. Only cash transactions will be affected, requiring people to round to the nearest nickel. [url]
• Hungary once produced currency with a denomination of 100 million billion Pengos. That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 Pengos -- worth about 20 cents in the US. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101114/23415511867 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111001/02322616166/dailydirt-coins-worth-more-than-gold.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111001/02322616166/dailydirt-coins-worth-more-than-gold.shtml huge surplus of dollar coins but will continue to make them in just enough quantities to satisfy coin collectors. Interestingly, coin collectors have been bidding on some extremely rare coins lately. Here are just a few examples of some valuable coins out there.

• A penny from 1793 sold at a recent auction for $1.38 million. That's the most a US copper coin has ever sold for at an auction. This coin was especially rare because it was never released into circulation. [url]
• Another coin that never made it into circulation was the 1933 Gold Double Eagle -- which was printed but then retracted when US currency left the gold standard. One of them sold at an auction in 2002 for $7.5 million and continues to hold the record for the most ever paid for a gold coin. [url]
• A rare 1787 gold Brasher doubloon just sold for $7.4 million and just missed breaking the record for the value of a gold coin. It's still worth well more than its weight in gold (26.66 grams ~ $1,500). [url]
• To discover more stuff on economics, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

As always, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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