History Main / PayingInCoins

[[https://notalwaysright.com/a-penny-dreadful-part-4/274152/ multiple]]

* [[https://notalwaysright.com/it-would-be-penny-wise-to-accept-them/ This customer]] on Website/NotAlwaysRight has ''[[OverlyLongGag way too many]]'' coins in his fanny pack. "''THEY'RE BREEDING!''"

** a Georgia business owner, angry at an employee who reported him to the Department of Labor for wage theft on his final paycheck, dumped over $900 in pennies on the man's yard, covered in motor oil and with a profanity-infused letter on top. The Department of Labor still sued him.

* ''Webcomic/{{Whomp}}: [[https://www.whompcomic.com/comic/hope-for-change "Hope For Change"]]

* The United States does not have a law allowing merchants to reject payments in change, which might be [[WeAllLiveInAmerica a reason for the trope's prevalence]]. Although there is no federal law that says merchants ''must'' accept any and all denominations, many states do. This leads to issues where merchants in some states ''can'' refuse to accept payment in pennies, and others can't. The thing in the U.S. is that if you have already ''incurred'' a debt, then the other party ''does'' have to accept any payment in legal tender, including in coins. This includes taxes -- which is why American tax protesters can (and do) pay their taxes in pennies as a protest. Indeed, Americans can be quite creative at paying relatively trivial amounts in small change, and the authorities can be equally creative in smacking them down:

'''Ice Cream Man:''' ''Precisely''. And after counting was done, it is time to put pennies in safe. And I am noticing my shoelace is untied. Now I very well couldn't stop to tie my shoes since somebody had given me heavy jar of pennies to hold, and the ice cream man rules say to keep any amount of money over a dollar in the safe. So I trip, and I break my tooth. The pain, it is so bad! [[HumiliationConga My girlfriend left me! I lose apartment! I lose car! I am forced to live on the freeway with wild animals! I CAN'T EVEN EAT ICE CREAM BECAUSE OF THE PAIN! ALL BECAUSE OF YOUR STUPID PENNIES!!]] AAAAAUGGGHHH! ''[hyperventilating]''

->'''Ice Cream Man:''' It is first day on job, everything is going great, until you come. You wanted most expensive ice cream, I must suggestion of cheaper ice cream, but no, you want expensive one. And after I am giving you ice cream... you pay with pennies. Do you know how long it took me to ''count those pennies''?\\

'''Ice Cream Man:''' Precisely.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' episode "[[Recap/ThePowerpuffGirlsS3E12MoralDecayMeetTheBeatAlls Moral Decay]]", Bubbles receives a Sacagawea dollar from the Tooth Fairy after Buttercup [[LooseToothEpisode accidentally knocks one of her teeth out]]. Buttercup then proceeds to knock the teeth out of numerous villains and starts hoarding the money she receives, eventually going too far and continuing to punch the teeth out of the villains when they're minding their own business. When [[EvenEvilHasStandards the villains]] [[KarmicInjury knock Buttercup's teeth out]] as retribution after [[EnemyMine Blossom and Bubbles]] [[EveryoneHasStandards learn what she was doing behind their backs]], [[LaserGuidedKarma the Professor uses Buttercup's bag of Sacagawea dollars to pay off her dental bills]].

** [[BadHumorTruck An Ice Cream Man's deep-seated grudge against Dexter]] turns out to be from Dexter paying for an ice cream (the most expensive one on stock, by the way) with a ridiculously large jar of pennies, an accident which [[DisasterDominoes manages to systematically ruin the Ice Cream Man's entire life]]. After the Ice Cream Man explains this to Dexter and the latter apologizes, Dexter buys a regular ice cream (which costs $1)... and pays with a $100 bill. The Ice Cream Man's [[DespairEventHorizon anguished shriek]] says everything.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' episode, "[[Recap/ThePowerpuffGirlsS3E12MoralDecayMeetTheBeatAlls Moral Decay]]", Bubbles receives a Sacagawea dollar from the Tooth Fairy after Buttercup accidentally knocks one of her teeth out. Buttercup then proceeds to knock the teeth out of numerous villains and starts hoarding the money she receives, eventually going too far and continuing to punch the teeth out of the villains when they're minding their own business. When the villains knock Buttercup's teeth out as retribution, the Professor uses Buttercup's bag of Sacagawea dollars to pay off her dental bills.

* In BulletTrain, a girl tried to buy a bottle of water from a vending machine, but the water gets stuck. The next guy buys a different item and that unsticks the water.

** In "One Krab's Trash" the guy that offered Mr. Krabs 100,000 dollars for the hat emphasized that it's in cash. Also implied to be the same for the others trying to buy that hat.

* In ''LightNovel/CampfireCookingInAnotherWorldWithMyAbsurdSkill'', Online Supermarket requires whomever uses the skill, once their order is assembled, to pay for it before delivery. Since there are no credit cards and no paper money, the person ordering is Paying in Coins (by putting them onto a magic square that appears and acts like a "coin slot"). Once their payment is complete, their order magically appears in front of them.

* This is slowly becoming a DiscreditedTrope. Nobody wants to fiddle around with change anymore, and technology is slowly enabling people to avoid having to do so. Even places that traditionally use coins so that you can micromanage your consumption, like laundromats and arcades, are starting to transition to prepaid cards -- which you could, in theory, load up using coins, but can do just as easily with a debit or credit card. In some places like UsefulNotes/HongKong, your prepaid public transit card can be used all over the city for things like laundromats, vending machines, and convenience stores. And in Japan, arcades might accept [[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&u=https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitCash BitCash.]] {{Pinball}} machines, though, tend to be laggards -- most still demand coins.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Chowder}}'' episode "Schnitzel Makes a Deposit", the woman in the bank line ahead of Schnitzel and Chowder deposits two hundred [[FictionalCurrency dollops]] in change. It takes even longer then it should since Chowder keeps causing the elderly bank teller to lose count.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Chowder}}'' episode "Schnitzel Makes a Deposit", the woman in the bank line ahead of Schnitzel and Chowder deposits two thousand [[FictionalCurrency dollops]] in change. It takes even longer then it should since Chowder keeps causing the elderly bank teller to lose count.

* In the ''Literature/AlexRider'' story ''Eagle Strike'', Damian Cray pulls a lethal version of this on one of his henchmen. The henchman agreed to work for Cray in exchange for a $2million bribe, and when he [[YouHaveFailedMe screws up and attracts unwanted attention from a journalist]], Cray punishes him by locking him in a bottle-shaped chamber and giving him his money - $2 million in quarters, [[MoneyMauling crushing him to death]].

* The player can invoke this trope in ''VideoGame/OdinSphere''. You have to manually select the coins you want to pay with when buying things. The coins vary from the cheap Ragnanival Silver (worth 1G) to the rare and valuable Commemorative Coin (worth 20G). It's not only possible but ''recommended'' to buy expensive things and pay them with a truckload of Ragnan Silver, for several reasons: one, stacks of coins take up valuable inventory space, so getting rid of small change is crucial until larger backpacks become available. And two, the Pooka restaurant and cafe only accept the Valentinian coins, in specific denominations for specific recipes, requiring the player to save those coins for the restaurants rather than spend them at other stores. (In the remaster the currency system has been streamlined so that coins no longer take up inventory space and Valentinian coins are ''only'' accepted at the Pooka restaurants, so the trope ceases to apply.)

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/JohnnyBravo,'' a demon tries to get Johnny do some evil deeds, including going into an 10 items or less line at a grocery store with 11 items and then paying in Canadian pennies. This plan backfires though as one of the pennies is a rare coin that the cashier has been trying to find her whole life.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' episode, "[[Recap/ThePowerpuffGirlsS3E12MoralDecayMeetTheBeatAlls Moral Decay]]", Bubbles recieves a Sacagawea dollar from the Tooth Fairy after Buttercup accidentally knocks one of her teeth out. Buttercup then proceeds to knock the teeth out of numerous villains and starts hoarding the money she recieves, eventually going too far and continuing to punch the teeth out of the villains when they're minding their own business. When the villains knock Buttercup's teeth out as retribution, the Professor uses Buttercup's bag of Sacagawea dollars to pay off her dental bills.

* In the ''Literature/AlexRider'' story ''Eagle Strike'', Damian Cray pulls a lethal version of this on one of his henchmen. The henchman agreed to work for Cray in exchange for a $2million bribe, and when he [[YouHaveFailedMe screws up and attracts unwanted attention from a journalist]], Cray punishes him by locking him in a bottle-shaped chamber and giving him his money - $2 million in quarters, [MoneyMauling crushing him to death]].

* In the ''VideoGame/Fallout'' series, the first game's currency was bottlecaps; something problematic since it had weight and took up inventory volume. This could lead to situations where you would prefer to carry more valuable trade items (like the weightless healing supplies) rather than thousands of caps. Amended in the following games where a separate non-inventory coinage was added or caps became weightless.

* With ''VideoGame/BetrayalAtKrondor'', like Fallout, there was a heavy emphasis on bartering for goods and juggling an individual inventory encumbrance, but there were also silver and gold coins you could pick up (that went into your [[WalletOfHolding]]); you would have to farm quests several times to get the thousands of coins needed to buy new things (over looting the corpses of your enemies for slightly used, but sometimes rare and valuable, supplies that has to take up your limited pack space).