So I got this idea a few years ago, when my old math teacher and I went kayaking in DC. We would talk about anything, from stupid 80's movies, to strange mathematical concepts, and a lot in between. Anyway, the point is, one day we mentioned collecting quarters. She explained that she collected quarters, as did I, and 50 cent coins. This is where it gets interesting: we started thinking about just how many people collected the 50 state quarters. That's gotta be a lot of people, and in turn, a lot of quarters. And all those quarters are out of circulation, but they exist, with the potential to be put back in. So what if, one day, all of them WERE put back in? What would happen? Would anything happen? Let's say, that by some miracle, out of the 300,000,000 people in this country, 100,000,000 seriously collect enough quarters to have the 50 states. That's 50 quarters a person. So, 50 quarters times 25 cents equals $12.50. $12.50 times 100,000,000 is $1,250,000,000. 1.25 billion. Sounds like a lot, but in the scale of the economy, its not too much. But what about even more SERIOUS collectors, the people who have collected the 50 states over... 3 times. That's 150 instead. To make things even MORE complicated, just think about how many REPEATS the first 100,000,000 people had. They must have had 20 or 30 repeats each. Let's say 20. So those original 100,000,000 now have: [20 (repeats) + 50 (states) ] * .25 (dollars per quarter) *100,000,000 (people) = $1,750,000,000.
THEN we have to add on the serious collectors. Lets say they have every state 3 times over, and 20 additional repeats apiece, like the others. [20 (repeats) + 50 (states) ]* 3 (full sets) * .25 (dollars per quarter) *10,000,000 (people)= $52.50* 10,000,000= $525,000,000. Now add that on to the earlier 1.75 billion dollars, and we get 1.75 billion plus 0.525 billion= $2.275 billion or $2,275,000,000. Now if all that got pumped back into the economy, in one night, it might cause something. If in one moment suddenly over 2 billion dollars got put into circulation, it might cause a slight dip in the economy, due to the value of the dollar decreasing due to over abundance of in circulation money.
Who knows though, what if someday, everyone in the USA has 50 state quarters, repeats and all, and dumps THAT back in. It'd be fun to watch thats what.
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