Two-dollar bill is no thrill
This Friday marks the 20th anniversary of both a birth and a death.
The first toonies were put into circulation on Feb. 19, 1996, and we’ve been loving that pretty gold and silver piece of Canadiana ever since.
But that day also spelled the end of our terra cotta-coloured two-dollar bill. And it too was beautiful.
I have one in my hand right now. It’s probably been a while since you saw one. The Queen is on the front. On the back, two well-fed robins in the grass.
My bill is special. It came from dear and departed Auntie Margaret. She was my mother’s only sibling and loved us lots. And in the late 1980s, she sent a Christmas card to each of our kids. Chris would have been about six, Carly just three.
And in each of those cards, Auntie Margaret had tucked a $2 bill. The kids never did get to spend that money. I have a memorabilia file for each of them, and the card and cash are safely tucked away.
I’ll surrender the files when the kids tell me to, but for now I’m holding on to those $2 bills. As they say, they’re not making them anymore.
I do like the shiny toonie. I love that polar bear on the ice floe, and it’s a regal portrait of Elizabeth on the flip side. Some had suggested the new coin be called the moonie because it depicted the Queen with a bear behind.
The change to new money was all about money. They said a $2 bill only lasted a year. The toonie was supposed to be good for 20 years. (So if you have an original, it should be worn out right about now.)
The government said it would save more than $12 million a year. And each toonie cost just 16 cents to make.
We took to them right away. There were early reports of the bimetallic coin coming apart. Then everyone tried to duplicate the phenomenon — technically an illegal act. The mint assured the nation the odds were 60 million to one against your loonie falling apart.
Sadly, it was not inflation proof. Something you could buy for a toonie 20 years ago now costs 80 cents more. Other than that, there’s not much wrong with our most valuable coin.
Still, I’m sitting here with Auntie Margaret’s two-dollar bills, admiring those robins, thinking of spring. And thinking that folding money is nice, especially when it’s not that slippery new plastic stuff.
A bill just feels like more bucks. Ask the Americans, who will take a wad of ones any day over a pocket full of coins.
Then I get wondering how many people have a two-dollar bill stashed away somewhere. So I tuck mine — OK, Chris and Carly’s — into my breast pocket and walk down to Imperial Coin & Stamp, King East near Ferguson. Ed Agopian runs the show there and has been in the business 37 years.
I tell Ed about the Wilson family $2 bills and carefully extract them from the Christmas cards.
“No value,” Ed says with absolute certainty.
Nothing rare about $2 bills, he says. “I’ve got some in my pocket right now.” “No, you don’t.” “Are you a betting man?” he asks, then pulls out his wad. Ones, twos, you name it.
He says people come in every week, show him a $2 bill and hope it’s worth something. “Just spend it,” he tells them.
That’s what Ed does. He’ll have a meal somewhere, then tip the waitress a $2 bill. “They love it,” he says.
Not so at the McDonalds in the Walmart on Upper James. Ed ordered a combo there a few months ago, handed over a fiver and a couple of vintage twos. Though they’re still legal tender, the young person on cash wouldn’t take those old bills. It’s a toonie world today.