My Currency Museum

 My dad, who we lost about a year and a half ago, worked for twenty plus years for The Federal Reserve Bank in New York. Being in Public Information, one of things he used to do is give tours of the gold vault and my sister and I got a tour when we were kids.  I think he would have gotten a kick out of this blog.

A couple years back I had a rider who was a secret agent.  He worked for our government and helped our embassies, "Get done what they needed to get done." He had visited over 100 countries and said he was "semi-retired." During the ride he slipped me a $500 bill from the South Sudan where he had been recently. He said it was the newest country in the world, about 10 years old at the time.  The bill was only worth $3, but it looked pretty cool and I hung it up in my car, because a lot people don't get to see foreign currency.  Some riders took pictures of it and shared information with me about the country.

Earlier this year, a young rider gave me bills from Malaysia and Myanmar, which used to Burma. I put them together and hung them near the bill from the South Sudan.  Below are pictures of the three bills.

This past month for some reason, things have gotten out of hand.  Riders have been giving me bills as if they were donating to a museum. The young kid from Honduras was so exited to give me his bill, I didn't notice that it looked brand new until he was out of my car. Maybe he printed it that morning? Unfortunately, the pictures do not do the bills justice, since I put them in a sandwich bag to protect them.

Below I have an Indian bill with Ghandi and below that a Bulgarian bill that I was told was worth $5. On the right side is a Jamaican bill that a woman from Jamaica saw during the ride and shrieked and she actually scared me.

The most amazing bill is the Canadian one pictured on the top of a bill from Thailand.  There is too much glare on the right side to see the clear part of the bill on the right side of this.  It's worth at least a couple dollars, but I think it's too nice to give away even to buy something.

How will this end up? I have no idea, but it seems that others want to contribute their own foreign currency.  Sometimes other riders think that these are places I've been to, so I'm going to have to let them know that they came from other riders. I like giving riders something different and now I have a lot of things for them to see in my car.