Legal Tender and Best Currency for Cash?

X-No-Archive: yes In message , Terry Harper writes

Now that _is_ an odd business: half coin-collecting; half money marketing. Good luck to them for finding an unfilled niche.

Not only type of money but amount comes into the Legal Tender concept. If you went to buy a Mars bar which was on sale for say 45p and you offered the shop keeper 45 new pennies for it he could correctly point out that that is not legal tender. The coins are OK but the number of them being > 20 takes them outside of being "legal tender".

In all probabilities the shop keeper would welcome the change, but it was just made up as an example for this point.

Isn't it true that the concept of legal tender is not relevant here? Legal tender defines what money can be used for the payments of debts. You don't have a debt in a shop, as the shopkeeper could refuse to sell you the item. If you took the mars bar, promising to pay for it later, then the definition of legal tender would be important.

"Jeremy Sanders" wrote

True, but what about when the shopkeeper *doesn't* refuse to sell? :-

Customer sees price ticket for 45p on mars bar in shop (this is an "invitation to treat"). Customer takes mars bar to till ("offer to buy"). Shopkeeper says "that'll be 45p please!" ("accepting" the offer to buy, hence creating the contract).

At this point, a contract exists such that customer owns the mars bar but owes the shopkeeper 45p. That's a debt, isn't it?

Customer offers a Scottish pound note....

I would have thought of it as an exchange of 45p for the goods, rather than a debt. If the customer wanted, he could say "no thanks" after the shop owner asked for 45p.

Wikipedia says the following:

A typical bloody stupid redesign of currency... US notes all look the same unless you examine them closely. And don't even get me started on their highest coin in general circulation being worth about 15p (25 cents) making telephone calls a nightmare.

Come to think of it, whoever designed the Euro coins should be shot... with 1 and 2 cent coins; 10 and 20 cents; 1 and 2 euro coins being so similar...

Axel

The plastic Norn Iron banknotes often get a funny look.