Coins worth more than the metal they’re made of
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
02 August 2015
An ingenious preacher pulled out two bank notes from his pocket: one was an old, tattered Sh1,000 note, the other a crisp, straight-out-of-the-press, brand new Sh50 one. He then asked the congregation which of the two notes they would prefer. Obviously, everyone pointed at the Sh1,000 one. Even after trying very hard to convince them that the Sh1,000 was in a very bad shape – going as far as trampling on it with his feet – they still chose it!
So finally he asked them why they are choosing the old tattered note and not the crisp new one and the answer was simple: it represent a lot more value than the Sh50. Then the preacher explained that that is the same with the value of a human being: it is about what you represent and not how you look or what you have.
Well, this is not a spiritual column, but I use that story to emphasize the point I made last week: currency notes and coins are not money – they are just one way of representing it.
When the Sh10 coin was introduced in the 1990s, it was so uniquely beautiful that some ingenious people started making earrings with it. The ornaments were going for up to Sh500 per pair! Imagine that, buying Sh20 for Sh500. It is not only crazy, but illegal: you can be jailed for six months if you did that.
But what is even more shocking is an advert I saw on the Internet auction site, www.ebay.com: some one is offering four current Kenyan coins - Sh1, Sh5, Sh10 and Sh20 – for US$5. That is Sh500 for something worth only Sh36!
The current Sh100 note (printed in 2010) is also on offer for US$3.75, that is, Sh375 at the present exchange rate!
Now why would anyone in their right mind pay Sh375 for a Sh100-note? And why don’t we start exporting our currency notes and coins to earn foreign exchange? I’ll leave you to ponder on that…
Can one make a profit by exporting our coins as scrap metal? Take the one-shilling coin for example. It is made of steel coated with nickel to protect it against rust and weighs about 5.5 grams.
To make one tonne of metal, you would need about 180,000 coins; that is, Sh180,000 in face value. How much would these fetch in the international scrap metal markets?
The price in Europe and
In both cases, the money you get is much less than the face value of the coins. So, the rumours going round that the reason we have such a serious shortage of coins is because they are being exported as scrap is not true. More importunately, now we have proof that our coins are worth more than the metal they are made of.
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