Bad habits have bad outcomes, especially where money is
involved. In my case, the punishment was a result of a long-time habit of hoarding coins
– well, actually just dumping them when I get home and then leaving them in a
jar. Or two or three or…
The day came when enough was enough. The jars seemed to be
breeding in dark corners. Some looked like they were going to be impossible to
lift. What to do?
I didn’t want to get another coin sorter gadget. The batteries
are always dead when you need to use the stupid thing. OK, maybe that’s because
I don’t sort except every three years. And then, driven by delayed
gratification, dump too much metal at one time.
So, I looked on Amazon and found a cheap set of plastic
sorting tubes with a bunch of wrappers thrown in.
Cheap is as cheap does. The way they work is you fill the
tube with the designated type of coin and when you’ve reached the limit coins
start to spill out through a little slot in the side.
This worked OK for counting, but the next step in the instructions
is to put the wrapper around the stack in the tube, then close the top end,
remove, and close the bottom. A nice idea but it doesn’t work because the paper
tubes, which come flattened, won’t fit around the coins. Maybe rounded wrappers
would work, but those aren’t supplied. So you have to dump it all out and load
by hand, a process made difficult by folds in the tubes which turn coins
sideways. As a result, you have to dump them out and start over.
Not only that, the wrappers aren’t marked to show where the
ends of the stack should be. Maybe they were originally made for renminbi or
whatever Chinese money is called.
Really, this foreign stuff is poorly made. It makes one
nostalgic for bygone and better times.
Who can forget the glory days of the American coin wrapper
industry? Bells ringing on Wall Street as new wrapping ventures were launched…proud
workers, muscles bulging, holding up the fruit of their labors as flashbulbs popped...Life
magazine profiling the nightclub antics of the infamous the “Wrapper Barons.”
All gone now. “Sad,” to quote someone who sadly needs no introduction.
Even more humiliating, it seems the Chinese don’t want our
money anymore. The government in Beijing is having so much trouble finding
places to store US Treasury Bills, they’ve started giving them to farmers –
something to feed the pigs in the absence of American grain. Reportedly, consumers
have started complaining their pork has a “sour dollar” taste.
Actually, wrapping coins could be turned into a positive.
For example, one could give up coin hoarding for Lent. Then, as sort of a Good
Christian Kicker, vow to wrap up and turn in the last year’s haul at the same
time. Makes a lot of sense. Lent is 40 days and that’s about how long it’ll
take.
