I just have something short and sweet today as I’m heading out to TowerGroup’s annual conference in Boston, to give that presentation on multichannel integration that I mentioned last time.  But I saw this and I thought of all of you and I couldn’t leave without posting it.

Did you know that during the American Civil War and for a few years after, the United States issued paper currency in lieu of coins?  According to rebelstatescurrency.com, the 5, 10, 25, and 50 cent notes were issued due to a coin shortage.  Because of the shortage, people had been using stamps for change. To stop that practice, the decision was taken to issue actual paper “change”.  Follow the link and you can see pictures of the various issues of paper change.

Fast forward to today and I would be interested in hearing your views on paper change.  Would it be easier if change today were also on paper?  On the one hand, you wouldn’t be lugging around all of that heavy change.  On the other hand, you’d probably be sending mutilated paper change back to the Fed in buckets (or bundles, as the case may be).

P.S. Many of you in the currency world may have known this but I’m not ashamed to admit, I did not.  And I’m also not ashamed to admit that I initially learned about this from watching Pawn Stars.  That show is just one big history lesson.