Four years after Ireland adopted the euro, up to 60 people a day are still turning up at the central bank in Dublin to offload their old punts — many with some peculiar explanations.
”There are still a lot of people finding hoards of old money, but the amounts are getting smaller,” central bank spokesperson Elaine Mannix said on Thursday.
”The numbers turning tend to peak at holiday time or during big shopping periods like the sales or before Christmas.”
Commercial banks stopped exchanging punts for euros three years ago, leaving the central bank’s headquarters in the Irish capital as the only place where old money can be changed for new.
Some of the reasons they do so are certainly unusual.
One woman stripping the walls of her living room in preparation for redecorating found an old 50-punt note stuck behind the old wallpaper.
Sorting bookshelves brought a windfall for another woman who found a 100-punt note that had been used as a bookmark.
When a bulb blew on a table lamp and the fixture came loose when it was being replaced, a woman discovered that a hoard of old notes had been stuffed down the neck of the lamp.
”She was a widow and she thought her husband had probably hidden the money there years ago,” Mannix said.
There are still about 302-million punts’ (€383-million) worth of old Irish money yet to be changed into euros, about a third of it coinage.
”The number of people coming [to the central bank] generally varies between 50 and 60 a day,” Mannix said. ”We found the main theme this year has been outdoors. Up until now, people have found money around the house in drawers, old handbags, in the pockets of old clothes and in the back of cupboards.
”In 2005, a lot of the coinage being brought in has been found in outside sheds. Tins and jars of money have been dug up by people gardening. We obviously don’t know why anyone would have buried it in the first place, but they did.
”It is busier during school breaks. It looks to us as if parents try to find something for children to do and one thing is to send them to change any old money that has been found.” — Sapa-AFP