City To Foreign Coins: Drop Dead

Each year the Department of Transportation takes in hundreds of pounds of foreign coins inserted in city parking meters:

So numerous are the foreign coins that the city, for the past decade or so, has taken to selling them annually to the highest bidder. The latest batch — 700 pounds of foreign coins — is now on sale by the city’s Department of Transportation, which is accepting bids until 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

In the past, winning buyers have paid roughly $2 to $4 a pound.

“We’re not here to make a killing or a windfall,” said Anthony A. Alfano, deputy chief of meter collections. “We’re here to flush out the spurious coins that are not of value to the city. We don’t have the resources to pull out 3 Swiss francs, this and that. We’re not collectors here.”

Each day, the city takes in about 1.2 million quarters, or $300,000, in parking revenue, officials said. While multiple-space meters have coin-return slots, meaning they will not accept improper coins, the traditional single-space meters do not, so foreign coins end up with the quarters whether or not they are recognized as legitimate.

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Although Canadian quarters, Dominican pesos and Greek drachmas have traditionally been quite common, a quick survey of coins from a 50-pound canvas bag that is part of the sale revealed money from at least 50 countries, with both current and obsolete coins of many sizes, metals and even shapes. (A square coin with rounded corners from Aruba was in the mix.) While it is easy to envision the voyage of a pocketful of change from, say, France or the Dominican Republic, countries that were well represented, it is harder to imagine the journey that coins from French Polynesia or Uzbekistan took to wind up in a New York City parking meter.

The denominations in this sample varied widely too: a 10-franc coin from West Africa, a 5-shekel piece from Israel, 50 centavos de lempira from Honduras, 10 kroner from Norway, 5 korunas from the Czech Republic, 25 cents from the Bahamas.

Most of the coins were about the size of a quarter, but some were much smaller (like a euro cent coin from Germany) and others much larger (a seven-sided 50-pence coin from Ireland, and now withdrawn in favor of the euro).

The highest face-value coin was a 2-euro piece, worth about $2.50. Some of the old Polish and Chinese coins, while worth tiny fractions of a cent in face value, if anything, were probably worth a few cents to a collector. Some of the coins were shiny and new and looked as if they had hardly been in circulation; others were so dirty and worn that few collectors would want them.