h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Copper coins do not smell.... The smell is, if I recall correctly, the smell of all the sweat from peoples hands, on the coin, which does some kind of wizzy chemical reaction to produce the smell that we all* identify as being the smell of a one or two penny piece - I Haven't plucked up the courage to bag up my penny and two penny piece 'colelction' for years because of this... bagging up the 5, 10 and 20 p peaces, is far more rewarding financially anyhow (paid for all the Christmas food this year from my 'silver collection' )

All right, having now done the test, here are my results :
I had 2 2-euro coins, 5 1-euros, 1 10-cents, 4 5-cents, 2 2-cents, et one 1-cent.
I identified all but three of them.
I mistook a 5-cent for a 2-cent, a 2-cent for a 5-cent, and a 10-cent for a 2-cent.
But taking them 2 or 3 at a time and comparing seems to give a better result for me.

Thanks 2legs, when I have some notes to compare I will try the measuring thing

Ok. Here goes.

Big, thick. £2. Correct
Medium, thin-ish, smooth edges. 2p. Correct
Small, thin, smooth edge. 1p. Correct.
Big, thick. £2 again. Correct
Large thin, angular. 50p. Correct
Big, thick. £2 again. Correct
Small, thick, serrated edge. £1. Correct.
Big, thick. £2 yet again. Correct.
Smallish, thin-ish, serrated edge. 10p. Correct.
Small thin and with a serrated edge. 5p. Correct.

So what am I going to do with £9.68. Perhaps I'll have a feel down the back of the settee and see how much I have down there.

Mt grandfather was blind and pre-decimal, so far as I can tell he was pretty good. I don't think I would have a hope in hell with notes though.

PP.

*looks at that list of 'loose change' beers on you I thinks!

I found an odd one, in my jeans pocket, this morning, as I was getting stuff ready for doing laundry..... it's a two pence coin, but kinda serrated on the edge, BoB-knows what has happened to it, to end up in such a state

Also, asides the 'edges' fo the coins', I can feel the differnce between the surface on copper ones, compaired to 'silver' as it were... also, on a 5P, the closeness of the 'etching' on the faces, makes it feel differnt from a penny, which seems to be less deeply etched, or less etching full stop, not sure which I probably also notice the weight of the coin[s] too, but arn't necessarily conscious of it... Actually I doubt I really 'consciously' 'feel' what each coin is now, its just so second-nature I guess Still wish I had my Father's coin cfall perception.... his hearing seems useless for most things, but I swear he can hear someone drop a coin from several streets away

Blimey, 2ps are really hard. They're also deceptively heavy. I had two 2ps and got them wrong both times. Got all the other right though. Didn't take long because I never have much cash ...

Mol

I sorted through the big pile of loose change on its way to my boin collection boxes/tubs (gin bottle metal tub, for coppers, and washing capsule plastic box for silver).

I think a lot of the time, I do just go by weight... I'm not like 'feeling' round them, or anything, and there were... two or three quid there in silver, (no fifty pence pieces, they stay in my wallet), and a dozen or so coppers...

The mutant two pence coin I have is weird though... someone has really roughed up the edges on it... well; I'm pretty* damn sure it is* a two pence coin... all wrong weight and diameter for a ten pence, and not thick enough for a two pound coin I'll bag it up with the rest of the two pence coins, next time I decide I want to cash in some of the collection the metal on a five p, just feels differn to a 1 P... sort of hard to describe... size differnce anyhow I guess... maybe its just that and not as heavy as a penny, I think

The hardest part is telling coins that are not legal tender from others.

I have a large pewter pot full of channel islands and Commonwealth coins that are not valid, as well as coins that are no longer in circulation such as old 5 pence pieces (confused with 2p coins), 10 and 50p coins.

Notes are harder, but have raised ink that some sight-impaired people can detect.

Hopefully the new polymer-enhanced notes will help, such as they use in Australia etc.

Hope that helps.

Will mix my 'foreign' coins with UK coins and give you a result.



MMF

I have 35 euro coins in my wallet and I was able to tell them all apart.

ok I had a go and emptied my purse. Usually I keep UK coins on one side and Euro coins on the other. First the UK coins:

small smooth - 1p - correct
large angular - 50p - correct
small angular - 20p - correct
small smooth * - 1p - correct
large smooth * - 2p - correct (difficult took a while)
small angular - 20p - correct
small angular - 20p - correct
small milled - 5p - correct
small (tiny) smooth - 1 euro cent - correct after a bit of confusion
small milled - 5p - correct
small smooth * - 1p - correct

* these took a little longer to identify because they were old coins and the edges have been damaged

then I tried the Euro coins which would have been better had I done it before putting the small coins in my coin jar

Large milled - EUR 2 - correct
small combination of smooth & milled - EUR 1 (two of them) correct

Then I tried the notes. Unlike notes in the USA which I believe are all the same size, Euro notes (and pounds of which I only had a tener so no point testing it) are all different sizes, with the 5 Euro note being smallest, graduating in size up to the big ones that I've never seen.

I had 3 notes and could identify them when I put them together and sorted them according to size - a 20, 50 and 100 note. But that was relatively easy because I knew which ones i had.

I then mixed them up without looking and tried to identify by feel. I got the 100 right but I couldn't swear that if I had a larger selection I'd have correctly identified it.

With the others what I realised after being unable to be sure what I had in my hand I realised that the EUR 20 note has the shiny silver hologram stripe which is very smooth so if I did it again with my 3 notes I'd be able to spot that. The 50 and the 100 notes have a sort of blob of a hologram in the lower right corner of the front of the note.

All Euro notes have the number in the top right corner and they are rough so that you are supposed to be able to feel the number. I could tell the difference between the 50 and the 100 only because the 100 was a bigger area of roughness and I could identify the Zeros after a while.

I guess if you have new-ish notes and you know the tricks they would be relatively straightforward, say for a blind or partially-sighted person. If you suddenly lost your sight I'd guess that coins are relatively easy (although I can't guarantee to be able to spot the difference between a 2 cent and a 5 cent coin) but notes would take some practice.

That was a really interesting experiment.

oh and I'm not usually in the habit of carrying 100 euro notes around, I've been to the bank

It's odd that at least one of the pre-euro currencies had raised bumps to allow blind people to tell the notes apart, but the designers of the euro notes didn't include this feature.

The bumps on the notes I seem to recall arn't actually as useful as at first they might seem to be.... notes get worn and dammaged and suchlike so* quickly once in circulation....

another thing I tend to do, coin-wise; all my 5 P 10 P 20 P 2 P and 1 P coins, go into my little 'inside' pocket in my right hand jeans pocket, so I only tend to keep £1, £2, and 50 P coins in my wallet compartment ... though, if I'm out, and throwing change away, it tends to all get shoved into my wallet, until I get home, where anything lower than a 50 P, eventually enters one of my two coin boxes Telling notes apart, when you've more than a couple, of difernt demoninations is pretty easy, by size...

When I make my new wallet, I'm going to have three 'compartments' for notes, one for £20, one for £10 and one for £5 may even consider having two seperate coin compartments in it, although the size of the wallet may then be an issue

Happy Nerd ed a bit soon and she overlooked a serious issue with US coinage.

The quarter and dollar coins are very nearly the same size and thickness. Back in the 70's, the first new dollar coin was introduced, the Susan B. Anthony dollar. It was so often confused with quarters, even by sight, that it quickly fell out of use. Then more recently, the Sakageweah dollar was introduced. It was a different color from the quarter, but retained the same size as the previous Susan B. Anthony dollars to accommodate use in vending machines without having vending companies retrofit or change their sorters. So, again, people often confuse the quarter and dollar coins. Now this isn't a common problem though because hardly anyone actually uses dollar coins. Rather than promoting their use and flooding the markets with dollar coins so that they'd be ubiquitous, the US Mint promoted collecting them and hoarding them. Every year now it seems they change the faces of dollars, quarters and even nickels to encourage people to keep them out of circulation. This creates some profit for the mint, but the cost spent for dollar bills is still a great loss for taxpayers. $1 bills have an expected life of less than a year. If the US public would actually start using dollar coins much of that cost could be mitigated. This would have been easier if they'd just gone ahead and changed the size of the dollar coin to make it more recognizable.
I will note though that the dollar coins have smooth edges (actually they have "In God We Trust" etched on the edges, ) so it's not that difficult to tell the difference.

Now some other coin facts. The grooved edges, or reeding on coins was meant to discourage shaving coins for the precious metals they were commonly made with before the days of fiat currencies.

Also, in most common coins it is possible to tell their faces from their tails by feel. The faces are typically smoother than tails. This can be used to cheat at the flip of a coin. If you flip the coin and then place it on the back of your other hand you can subtly rub the coin between your hands and feel the difference with practice.

When I first returned to England on retirement, I saved everything smaller than 50ps in the appropriate money boxes. This became too expensive about 18 months ago, so now I just have two pigs - one for copper and one for 5ps (which I perversely call sixpences)
On trying your experiment, I have to hope I can keep more of my eyesight than my also diabetic father managed; I am absolutely hopeless. 1p feels like 5p and 2p like 10p. Maybe I'll have to revert to one big jar for coins less than 20p, which I CAN distinguish.