: What is the lifespan of a series of currency? I traveled to Canada from the USA and as a souvenir I decided to bring some Canadian cash back with me. While I plan to keep it just as a souvenir, it made me wonder how long

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

Currency lives no more then 50 years.
US currency did not expire in last 100 years, but it was reinstated few times, last one was 2009.

Note that currency is not just what you hold in your hand. Currency is system of relations of money supply (currency is not money but we forced to use standard terminology), banking rules and government policy. Currency exists as long as government wants it to.

In 2009 for example, US government decided it needs new currency and just printed whole new money supply. So US dollar is now counting as "partially fresh new currency". It was reinstated. Not expired. But today's dollar is totally different from 90s and 00s. Will it be accepted after 200 years? Yes (probably). But most likely at that time there will be totally new US dollars. And new Euros, new Pounds and so on.

Currency is method of transfer. You can have that physical coins you have, but as economic agent it will die very quickly. It is not only related to inflation, in fact, inflation is the least of your worries. If you count all currencies in the world which ever existed, most of them 99.99% are completely dead by now (with governments which supported it). Not even single one currency which lived more then 100 years. US dollar was reinstated in 1860, 1907, 1930, 1973, 1987, 2009 and in fact it is not single currency but dozen which were allowed to be used "for compatibility reasons".

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

In general, currency has no expiration date.

Specifically, in Canada, the Bank of Canada has been issuing banknotes since 1935, and these are still considered legal tender, even though they don't look much like the modern banknotes. Before that, Canadian chartered banks issued currency, and these also still have value.

However, there are a few things to note. First of all, with currency of that age, it often has more value as a collector's item than the face value. So spending it at a store would be foolish.

Second, store clerks are not experts in old currency, and will not accept a bill that they do not recognize. If you want the face value of your old currency, you may need to exchange it for modern currency at a bank.

Having said all that, there are certainly cases where currency does expire. Generally this happens when a country changes currency. For example, when the Euro was introduced, the old currencies were discontinued. After a window of exchange, the old currency in many cases lost its value. So if you have some old French Franc notes, for example, they can no longer be exchanged for Euros.

These types of events cannot be predicted in the future, of course, so it is impossible to say when, if ever, the Canadian currency you have today will lose its spending value in Canada.

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

US currency doesn't expire, it is always legal tender.

I can see some trouble if you tried to spend a ,000 bill (you'd be foolish to do so, since they are worth considerably more). Maybe some stores raise eyebrows at old-style 0's (many stores don't take 0 bills at all), but you could swap them for new style at a bank if having trouble with a particular store.

Old-series currency can be an issue when trying to exchange US bills in other countries, just because it doesn't expire here, doesn't mean you can't run into issues elsewhere.

Other countries have different policies, for example, over the last year the UK phased in a new five pound note, and as of last month (5/5/2017) the old fiver is no longer considered legal tender (can still swap out old fivers at the bank for now at least).

Edit: I mistook which currency you took where, and focused on US currency instead of Canadian, but it looks like it's the same story there.