They say money doesn’t bring happiness but I just accidentally discovered that some euro coins are magnetic and proceeded to spend 30 minutes testing every type of coin from around the world I own to see if they’re also magnetic, which severely improved my mood
Here are the full results in case you were curious:
🇺🇸 United States Dollar:
1¢: No
5¢: No
10¢: No
25¢: No
$1 coin: No
Overall rating: Terrible
🇪🇺 Euro:
1c: Yes
2c: Yes
5c: Yes
10c: No
20c: No
50c: ??? (Don’t have one)
€1: Yes
€2: Yes
Overall rating: Mostly good.
🇨🇿 Czech Koruna
1 Kč: Yes
2 Kč: Yes
5 Kč: ???
10 Kč: Yes
20 Kč: Yes
50 Kč: ???
Overall rating: YES EXCELLENT
🇬🇧 British Pound
£2: Yes!
Overall rating: Need more data. I’ve never been to the UK, I found this one coin on the ground in Prague
🇨🇭 Swiss Franc
1 Fr: No
2 Fr: No
Overall rating: Again, not enough data. The only time I’ve been to Switzerland has been during airport layovers.
🇨🇦 Canadian Dollar
5¢: ???
10¢: Yes
25¢ Yes
Loonie ($1): Yes
Toonie ($2): Yes
Overall Rating: GREAT. Yet another wonderful thing about Canada.
Conclusion: The preliminary results of this experiment further supports my hypothesis that America has the most boring money in the world. So far Canada is in 1st place because their $5 bills have astronauts on them and they smell like maple. The bills, not the astronauts. More data is needed to determine whether Canadian astronauts also smell like maple, but it is likely.
Of all the semi-popular posts I’ve made, this one has been the most wholesome so far. People are sending me info about which of the coins in their country are magnetic and it’s making me very happy. I love the internet sometimes
So the reason US coinage is not magnetic is because magnetism is used as an easy rejection rejection test in things like vending machines between real coins and things like washers and various other round pieces of metal.
We DID have one coin that was magnetic, the 1943 penny:
Minted in zinc coated steel, this was made in 1943 only to alleviate the lack of copper that was needed to make ammunition.
It suffered a number of issues:
1) The vending machine problem as stated above
2) It rusted:
Due to the issues with the steel cents. The US mint went back to using a copper alloy using brass shell casings from 1944-1946