Not having a dig at you fwh but as this is the opinion of a manager of a travel company, I do not think it carries much weight. As has been stated in some of the replies on that link, you do not buy Greek, Spanish or French Euros, you simply buy Euros and they are valid anywhere in the Euro zone. I think if there was such an issue , the banks would have put out warnings by now.

John

He has raised a very valid point. Lets not kid ourselves the euro problem will only get worse. Those within the euro zone could very easily decide that any currency that is supposed to be backed by a government, and therefore safe is no longer so. We as the tourist may get caught up in the trap.

fwh

I am pretty sure it's only the coins that are stamped with individual countries, the Notes are all identical.

The notes aren't identical. I've just had a look at mine most have the number preceded by an X which means they were issued in Germany and some have a U which means France.That's the only difference though.

Greek notes would have a Y.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1693427/How-to-find-out-where-a-euro-note-is-from.html

This may be of interest.

Just had a peek of mine, where the majority have come from the post office or Travelex at Sainsbury's. Only got one Greek note. Vast majority are French and German.

Anyway I cannot see Greece leaving or being pushed out the Euro overnight.

Hi Shirley, I had to laugh at that article you gave the link to! It managed to turn what are very straightforward security measures into 'secret codes' - and of course the fact that some countries are going to have to share these code numbers! There are 17 countries issuing Euro notes and there can only be a maximum of 9 'secret code' numbers in that case based on adding up all the digits in the srial number again and again until you get to a single digit.

Linked to this, Euro serial numbers aren't consecutive in the everday sense - they only use every 9th number - a run of consecutive notes is the equivalent of them being numbered 1,10,19,28,37,46.55 etc and 9 is quite a 'magical' number and the rest follows on from that. Allocate each country a starting set of digits (and these were linked to the ASCII value of the country code letter!), then number each note only using every 9th number and you get the 'secret' code emerging. These 'codes' wouldn't have emerged if we used something other than base 10 for our counting system and/or they'd decided to only use every 6th number or whatever. Yes, checking the issuing country number against the 'checksum' is a good idea - but only because if there's a discrepancy it means that the note is a forgery.

The run of numbera I gave above are the basis for the Greek Euro notes by the way - if you want to avoid having Greek issued notes in your wallet then the 'magic' code number to avoid is 1. By chance the majority of leftover Euros I have at the moment are Austrian (N) and their sequence boils down to 3,12,21,30,39,48,57 and, yes, their secret code is 3! It doesn't matter how long the sequence goes on - numbers that are counted out in 9s will always add up to the same number as the one you strated the sequence with! Even once you get up to 11 digit numbers as on all Euro banknotes! Which is why the other way of identifying the 'secret code' is to divide the 11 digit number by 9 - the remainder will always be 1 for a Greek Euro note, 3 for an Austrian one etc. I can begin to see another 'magical' number 9 party trick based on Euro note serial numbers emerging here - must work on that one

As you can tell, I love the number 9 because of the games you can play with it - and the fact that I never needed to learn my 9 times table as a child because you can so easily do it on your fingers! Hold your 10 fingers up and fold each finger over in turn and count the fingers in front of the folded finger and those after it and you'll see what I mean.

SM

PS Of course none of this has anything to do with whether we should be avoding or getting rid of Greek issued Euro notes! I reckon I'll hold on to the solitary Greek 5 Euro note in the 'leftovers' wallet - it might end up being worth far more as a curiosity if the Greeks are bumoed out of the Euro
PPS If you know what you are looking for you can even work out where and by which printer a note was printed - which isn't necessarily in the issuing country - our very own Royal Mint has turned printing Euro notes for issuing banks within the Euro zone into a nice little earner

@ Sma, I think you love maths and all you can do with it- snap

I teach some of the older children how to do the trick with the fingers to 'learn' the 9 times table too.

As for avoiding the Greek notes- I would imagine if you're ordering on line you'd have to take what you were sent as I haven't seen anywhere you can request not to receive specific ones. I will be ordering mine on line as usual and take what I am given as I believe that a euro note is a euro note with exactly the same value from whichever country it's issued. The only way the Greek ones would be worth less is when/if they get stamped over during a currency transition which I can't see happening during thie summer season.

I'm with you too on this panic about avoiding Greek notes as well - a Euro is definitely a Euro with exactly the same value no matter which central bank issued it. And as far as I can see the only Euro notes that will become Drachmas will be the overstamped ones - and they won't be able to overstamp the ones we have in our pockets. Or all the Euro notes that the Greek people are withdrawing from their banks and stashing under the mattresses! Banknotes aren't really 'money' anyway in the sense of having any intrinsic value in the way that gold does - they're just vouchers or tokens that make bartering goods between us all that much easier.

SM

PS If you don't know it already I'll PM you a great party trick using people's birthdays that always astounds those who don't have a good grasp of mathematical rules of probability - which seems to be most people these days or why else are so many lottery tickets sold

I simply pointed people to an article. Should Greece decide to leave the Euro then problems could arise. If they devalue then any Greek euros in circulation would become suspect. Would the Greek government reimburse you at the average euro rate or the devalued rate?

fwh

frank I agree there probably will be problems down the line but I don't think things will dramatically change this summer. If I hadn't already booked I probably would think twice about booking and I certainly wouldn't be thinking of booking for next year until we see how things pan out.

Frank, I know that you simply pointed to the article - it's the journalist who talked up a scaremongering story from a travel boss that I'm taking issue with. There will certainly be problems if Greece leaves the Euro but they won't be allowed to unilaterally devalue the Euro so that it's not worth the same as all the other Euros in circulation. They've got to either be in or they've got to be out and then will have to revert to the Drachma or whatever. The situation of them using a Euro which isn't a Euro worth the same as every other Euro in circulation is a non-starter. If they have to elave the Euro, in the first instance, the Greek central bank will overprint Euro notes they're holding and they will cease to be Euro notes and become whatever is the replacement currency and those overprinted notes will radully be withdrawn from circulation as they are replaced with new Greek Drachma notes or whatever.

At the moment, with a little help from the Spanish and other weak economies, they've already dragged the exchange rate down to £1 = 1.25E throughout the euro zone. So the 100 Euros in assorted low denomination notes plus a ragbag of coins that I have, are now worth approx £80 but at the time I acquired them the rate was around 1.10Euros and so those Euros would have cost me around £90 at at that point. So they've already been devalued but I'll get a good few more per £100 of my money when I buy some more for a forthcoming trip in early July to Berlin.

If the Euros were being traded on an open market at the moment then a German Euro would probably be valued much more than the rest of them and the Greek one would be being traded at well below the current rate. But if you do that then you might as well abandon the Euro altogether - it ceases to be a common currency. If the Euro continues its current downward trend then the most likely scenario is that the Greeks will be ejected from the Euro zone whether they like it or not. But if they are followed by the Spanish and the Italians then there's a chance that the whole Euro common currency will collapse and if that happens it won't matter one bit which country issued the notes - they all become just so many pieces of paper. Just as the Mark did in 1930s Germany and everywhere else where there has been a complete collapse of the currency and/or roaring inflation.

This is one of the reasons why Angela Merkel is taking such a hard line with the Greeks because she doesn't want that to happen - she'll push them out of the Euro before they drag the value of the Euro down too far because a Euro note has to be worth exactly the same throughout the whole of the Euro zone of the single currency system is to work. If we get to the point where it does become important to know which country issued which notes we'll have a whole lot more to worry about than just the Greek ones.

That small bundle of notes I've got are left over from my last trip to the Canary Islands will have been mainly acquired either in change or they'll have come out of an ATM in Valle Gran Rey on La Gomera. Only one of them was actually issued by Spain - the other 8 are as follows:

1 Greece
1 France
1 Italy
5 Austria

And whilst most of the coins are Spanish there is a sprinkling of German, Irish and some I'm not sure about amongst them too! I think that this spread probably tells us more about who visits the Canaries than anything else and I will have contributed to this multi-mix myself over the years. I usually buy enough Euros here in large denomination notes to pay for the rent of the apartment in cash on arrival and with 17 issuing countries to choose from the odds are that my local Post Office won't have sold me just Spanish Euros. And then they'll start circulating around the island too, possibly even finding their way into that ATM I use - who knows? Unscrambling that mix of notes and coins in use will be nigh on impossible and hence pointless for anybody to even try.

If I was already booked to go to Greece this year as Shirley is, the current situation wouldn't put me off - like her, I'd still go and take things as they come. Would I book to go now? Probably not, and I certainly won't be planning on visiting Athens in the near future but it wouldn't be because of uncertainty about the status of Greek Euro notes but much more to do with the general uncertainty about the whole situation in Greece and the prospect of civil unrest in the capital. But then I'm not planning on visiting London during the Olympics either because I can't face the thought of the crowds and the general chaos of trying to get around London whilst they're on.

SM

Excellent post on all counts Sma. You put into words exactly the way I feel about the whole situation

As I said Frank, I was not having a dig at you, just expressing my opinion. I would much rather be warned about something which ends up not happening than not being warned about something which does happen so thanks for posting the info.

John

I am still of the opinion that the central bank and Germans will not allow Greece to default as it is only one in a house of cards for if Greece goes it is almost certain to take Cyprus with it,that would open the door for the Spanish to default to their own currency and so it would continue and with each country that leaves the lower it will be on the international market

I don't know how it would all work if Greece left the euro. For a start if they said All Greek euro notes would be turned into Drachmar at a lower rate there would be hysteria as all Greek people would be taking their money out of the banks well before the date change and converting them to sterling or dollars and hiding them under their beds! It'd make sense too as why would anyone keep hold of any money that was going to end up worth less when they were dropped from the euro? Then once the drachmar was in place they would change the dollars, sterling back to Drachmar but in the meantime the banks will run out of money!
Think about it. If you knew that the pound would be worth 50p in a few weeks you'd buy dollars (or other currency) with whatever pounds you had so that when the change came and the dollar was now worth 2 of the new currency you'd then switch back and get a hell of a lot more of the new currency than you would have got by simply letting it change over! It'll cause mayhem!

My understanding is that many Greeks keep their money under the bed to hide it from the taxman/national insurance and any other kind of official, so perhaps they will be putting it back in the banks, to convert it or just swapping it at exchange bureaux for something safer like dollars - nightmare.

Despite everything that I read and see on the TV I'm still not convinced it will happen. It really isn't in Germany & Benelux interests to let the Euro start collapsing all over the place, as that was chaos lays - I''m with Wizard on that, but I guess only time will really tell.

Doe

Plus I'm guessing a lot of the Greek money under their beds will probably be in other countries euro notes anyway!!!

For a start if they said All Greek euro notes would be turned into Drachmar at a lower rate there would be hysteria as all Greek people would be taking their money out of the banks well before the date change and converting them to sterling or dollars and hiding them under their beds! It'd make sense too as why would anyone keep hold of any money that was going to end up worth less when they were dropped from the euro? Then once the drachmar was in place they would change the dollars, sterling back to Drachmar but in the meantime the banks will run out of money!

That's why when these things happen, no advance notice is given - if it happens it will happen at very short notice. The first the general public will know about it if it does happen is that one day the banks won't open for business that morning, the ATMs won't work and the new/overstamped notes will be issued. There probably will be hysteria and mayhem on the streets if it happens but many Greeks are already emptying their bank accounts if they do have savings in them - and hence compounding the problem for the Greek banks. I'm not blaming them - I'd probably do the same in my position. In fact I already am in a way, having decided that the interest I'm receiving on savings is so negligible that I'm using a chunk of what I have in the bank to have a new kitchen installed and other work done on my house rather than have inflation erode the value of my hard-earned cash.

But like others, I think that it's unlikely to happen - Germany, with the support of others, will do everything possible to get Greece to face up to the mess they've got themselves into because having the Euro go into meltdown is in nobody's interest. And that includes the UK, hence why our Government has already quietly stepped in to join other Euro zone economies in helping to bail out the Greeks even though we aren't even members of the Euro zone. It's the lesser of the two evils.

SM