The Latest in Sticky Quarters

Canada’s new glow-in-the-dark dinosaur quarters are the “Best money ever” declares Janice Gelb.

An article at Gizmodo elaborates:

The first in the series is the admittedly forgettable Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai, but it instantly becomes awesome when you shut the lights off and the dino’s skeleton glows through its body. Who cares about that fancy new plastic money anymore? The only downside is that with a $30 price tag these won’t be going into regular circulation, though they can be used as legal tender at their 25 cent face value.

I’d know better than to take face value for a gold coin. But a plastic coin worth more than 100 times its face value? That’s an idea I’ll have to get used to.

[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the link.]

3 thoughts on “The Latest in Sticky Quarters

  1. Nothing new about this. They’ve done dinosaurs before, in holograms yet.

    Every year the Royal Canadian Mint puts out about a hundred “novelty” coins — some are solid silver or gold, some have platinum or niobium centers. They show French-Canadian jazz singers, biochemical scientists, provinicial flowers, Chinese-Canadian immigrants at the dock, dinosaurs from Alberta, the fist electron microscope, agricultural products, Canadian football league teams, poets nobody has ever heard of, famous Inuit (both of them), the invention of the Lobster trap, the Canadarm, Stompin’ Roy Conners, the Queen’s favourite mustache cup, absolutely *anything* that might bear any connection to Canada or Canadians. Quite a lot of the subjects are scientific or science fictional in their way. Just looking at the current catalog there’s the Vikings landing in Newfoundland, the discovery of gold in the Yukon, the tooth fairy, and the sinking of the Titanic. And that’s just what might be of interest to SF fans.

  2. Oh, and the one thing they have in common is that they aren’t in circulation. You can only get a nominal “quarter” or “loonie” by paying $89.95 and up. The are only sold through the mint, in velour lined boxes with printed booklets explaining that this is “real” money — ie: fifty cents — should you be so stupid as to want to spend it. I have nothing to do with them as a collector.

Comments are closed.