What’s the difference between legal tender and spending money?
A big headache for a Scarborough man who learned the hard way that banks aren’t obligated to honour collector’s coins at face value, even if they come from the Royal Canadian Mint.
Two months ago 32-year-old Orest Fokine took advantage of a deal on a new silver coin the mint had stamped to commemorate Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.
The coin retails for $25, but Fokine was able to buy more than 30 of them at their $20 face value.
On Tuesday he needed money quickly, and with no cash at hand he headed to a CIBC branch near Kingston Rd. and Midland Rd. with one of his silver coins, hoping to exchange it for cash or deposit it into his account.
But the teller there told him he could do neither, rejecting Fokine’s silver coin.
http://www.thestar.com/business/article ... e-hard-way
Like the hard-luck collector in the story, I also thought that in a worst-case scenario the coins were legal tender.
Put not your faith in Princes.
