Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Hella 500 Yen Coins

Ever wonder what hella 500 yen coins look like? Here you go.

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About a year and a half ago, pockets weighed down with some heavy ass 500 yen coins, I found this piggy bank at the local buck store. 500 yen is about $5. Every time I buy a 100 yen アメリカンドッグ, I gotta break a 1000 yen bill and get another shiny gold coin.

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So I had the extremely bright idea to never spend another 500 yen coin, and at the end of each day make a trip to my (extremely) local (piggy) bank.

I was totally diligent to this strange plan. Never spend a 500 yen coin. Even if something cost exactly 500 yen, and I had a coin handy, I would never use it. These coins became like my kryptonite. Some days I'd have like 5 or 6 at the end.

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If all are 500
300,000
collect the coins of 500 yen, it saves 300,000

It was all good, my new financial plan. While the economy went to shit, I secretly did my thing. What could I spend 300,000 yen on! Some crazy new camera equipment? Put it towards a new motorcycle? 500 bowls of ramen?

Or maybe I would move and have a couple new expenses, like furniture, that needed to be paid for. Yeah, it's that one.

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You literally have to bludgeon the bank with something.

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Success!

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I feel like a pirate with all these gold coins.

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I'm rich, bitch!

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Honk, honk!

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The ATMs in Japan are crazy rad. They have built in coin deposit bins. The even take the 1 yen coins. Just toss it all in, Coinstar style, and you're good to go.

Apartment furnished, rent paid, and a little super glue put the bank back together for round 2.

Anybody else have any crazy saving schemes?

6 comments:

Daniel said...

Nice work! I'm a huge fan of saving change. Currently saving for a trip to Europe next year.

So did it add up to 300,000 yen exactly?

Ramen Adventures said...

Just shy of 30万

colin said...

That's awesome! I've only ever saved small change and it takes so long to add up. I guess the closest thing I could do here (Australia) would be to save $2 coins.

Charles said...

Haha! That's awesome. I need to find one of those to start saving for my new camera.

ST said...

That's crazy! I have been doing the same thing for about a year now. I've gotten really into it and I just don't spend ANY coins now and man does it add up! I'm gonna quit 10 yen and below in order to get more 50/100/500 yen coins from now on though. It takes a lot less will power than I ever thought, too.

Brian said...

I have three 500 yen coins I want to sell for $10 for all three plus $2 shipping. My email is bfbrock@comcast.net