You can go to a bank and buy a half dollar for 2 quarters
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
3 points (61.5% liked)
No Stupid Questions
49930 readers
1139 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
No you can't I called all banks in 3 counties and they all said we don't carry those and they are rareties. I looked online and it 10 or so dollars for a fifty cent piece.
The person who answered the phone is a fucking moron. I bought $2 bills at my bank. They ain't rare they're minted by the millions.
Just Monday I went to one of our local banks and picked up $10 in half dollars. Not sure what the problem is with your banks.
Sell one to Don!
There's a difference between your banks not wanting to have them available and them actually being rare. They aren't rare, just not often used for paying for things.
Doesn't make it any easier to find one if local banks aren't keeping them available, but that's what it is.
(Assuming you're in the US) Back in the day, banks used to have them, you could just walk in and exchange currency without a fee.
That's how I got a collection of $2 dollar bills.
I know right that is so confusing. I can't even find like a 2026 half dollar for less than 10 or 20 dollars
Have you tried a foreign money exchange? I exchange dollars for pesos a lot and they regularly have $2 bills and 50 cent pieces because they are considered a good luck gift in Mexico.
Apparently giving them to a little person is considered extra good luck there—no clue why. Apologies if I got something culturally incorrect, I’m just repeating what the dude at the counter told me once, and I’ve heard Wee Man talk about the phenomenon of getting loads of random money and head pats when he was shooting footage in Mexico.
Try looking for a coin shop. Most cities will have at least a collectable store that sells coins, jewelry, stamps, etc.
What about a similarly sized steel blank or poker chip?
Have you tried a bank?
Have you tried a bank? They might just give you one for 50¢
Yeah, I was confused... hey OP, send me a stamped self addressed envelope. I actually have one sitting around.
But why not practice with a quarter?
Dark Tower fan?
You should be able to order from the US mint.
Also I'd suggest getting a 2 frank coin from Switzerland.
People don't like to hear it, but defacing currency is technically illegal, doesn't matter what loophole you think you have, the only thing that matters is intent and how permanent it is and if its 'fit to reissue'. Unlikely to get in trouble unless you're playing with it in front of an asshole cop/etc, the secret service is definitely not going to actually come after you, but there are asshole cops and it is worth knowing.
But yeah, if you can't find any at your bank, there are always plenty on ebay, they actually still made the Kennedy 50 cent piece until last year, just mostly uncirculated. You'll pay more online but not drastically more, $5 is the high end I'd expect.
Source?
18 USC 333, maybe more 331 for coins. You might hit 332, but specific callouts to the types of metals in the coins involved.
Sooooo..... you're partly right. The US draws a distinction between coins and banknotes, and 18 USC 333 only applies to banknotes. 332 is only for specifically trying to steal gold or silver out of older coins, which at this point is basically moot because the melt value is already way above face value. 333 applies to all coinage and has "fraudulently" as an explicit element. Basically, as long as you don't fuck with coins to the degree that it seems like you've come up with some scheme to defraud the government (there's a regulation, for instance, that bars massively changing bills into pennies and nickels just so you can melt them down for the metal value), then you do you with the sharpie or even the penny squisher.
Then, about 18 USC 333... Yes, nominally, anything that you do with an intent to fuck it up so much that the Bureau of engraving and printing is against the plain language of that code. In addition, 475 explicitly bars people from marking up cash to be used an advertisement, presumably also thereby making it unfit for reissue.
However, 333 runs up against a couple of issues. First, is a common law principle of de minimis and the practical realities of enforcement. As you say, it's not going to be an issue with a single bill unless you get an asshole cop, but even then the asshole cop won't get anything of significance pinned on you for such an insubstantial violation. Second, and maybe more important in a hypothetical discussion, is the first amendment. Cash is a pretty blatant symbol of the government, the country, the economy, and a million other things. If almost anything about the amount, timing, or manner of the way you defaced the cash could be interpreted as "speech" in a meaningful way, then you're protected, same as with burning a flag. Pretty much unless you're trying to burn down a BEP plant or bleach a bunch of singles to reprint as counterfeit 100s (the main reason for the law, AFAIK), a first amendment argument is going to be very easy to make, to the point where it's effectively not a crime to light your cigar with a piece of burning money.
It even says it twice in the statute yall, 18 usc 333 applies to bank bills, draft notes or any evidence of debt. It's most of the text.
You're not parsing the entire statute;. The clause "issued by any national banking association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System" distinguishes paper money (Federal Reserve notes) from coins coming from the mint. They are not the same. Maybe in a saner monetary system they would be, but because of how paper money developed in the US, they are not.
Those codes cover acts of fraud. You are free to deface money for funsies. source
333 doesn't mention fraud in any way. As mentioned, you're protecting against assholes effectively. Your source doesn't seem tohave any legal claims at all or mention any us codes in any way.
It basically just says yeah we feel like it's fine and you're probably okay.
You are incorrect. You can mark coins as much as you'd like, plate them, or otherwise deface them, as long as the intent is not to defraud. Source: the US mint
Your link ends their response to half of those questions with 'you should talk to an attorney'.
Most important piece in direct reference to the statute I've mentioned repetitively: "The United States Mint cannot issue interpretations of criminal statutes."
This is mentioned more than once.
Depends on which currency, and depends on how exactly you deface it.