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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Completely useless trivia question

If you could have your choice of 100 pounds of dimes, quarters, half-dollars or old Eisenhower dollar coins, which one should you choose?

And how much would they be worth?



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Joem figured out the answer. From his comment:
Assuming face value, in purely mathematical terms, they would be equivalent, based on:

100 lbs = 45359.237 grams

dime = 2.268 g = 199996.6358 coins = $1,999.66
quarter = 5.670 g = 79998.65432 coins = $1,999.66
half dollar = 11.340 g = 39999.32716 coins = $1,999.66
Eisenhower dollar = 22.68 g = 19999.66358 coins = $1,999.66

But, since you can't have part of a coin, you'd have to round off the decimal of the coins, so you would be best off with dimes, since you would have $1,999.60. With the quarters or half-dollars you would have $1,999.50, and the dollars would leave you with just $1,999.00.
The question that popped in my mind that prompted this was if I had an arbitrarily sized piggy bank, what coin would be best to fill it with? Once I started figuring it out I was surprised to see that the quarter, dime and half-dollar had the same weight/value ratio. The current dollars, of course, are worth more per gram, but on a hunch I looked up the Eisenhower dollar and sure enough it was the exact same ratio as the dime/quarter/half-dollar.

In case you care, 100 lbs of pennies is $181.43, of nickels it is $453.55 and of current dollar coins it is $5,599.