Exchanging Money in Munich

As I traveled to Romania this trip knowing that I will be here for three weeks, I figured I should get some Romanian Lei for spending money. Since I haven’t learned which local banks are the most convenient to use my ATM card, I stopped at one of the Currency Exchange stations in the Munich Airport.

While standing in line, this lady approaches me and asks “Do you have American Dollars to trade with me?”

My warning flag antenna immediately begin sounding loud and clear and I was simply going to tell her “No”, but she continues “I need one (1) American dollar. I have a Dollar Coin, but I need the paper currency, so I would like to trade this one coin for one paper dollar.”

She then hands me her coin. It is a John Adams gold dollar coin. I have never seen one and as far as I can tell, it looks legitimate and if someone is trying to pass counterfeit money, why would you make fake one dollar coins? I mean the manufacturing cost alone would be much higher than one dollar and you would have to make thousands to try and get rich off that scam. It makes no sense.

So I traded.

After all, if it’s legit, then everything is all OK. And if it’s fake, it only cost me a dollar and I have a trinket to save and share a fun story with friends and family (keyword here is SAVE so any of you Treasury Guys reading this have no fear; I am not passing counterfeit money).

I did run a quick search to learn if these coins were minted, and they were in 2007, so the likelihood of this coin being legit is good. The search also told me I could buy these coins online for $1.50 each, so now I have one which I got for a 33% discount; saving money.

So as the lady walked off, the guy in line behind me looks at it and we both enjoyed a good chuckle over the irony of  this lady wanting to exchange one dollar currencies while we were standing in line to exchange currency.

I guess it’s the little things that entertain me.