Garry Hertzberg, practising attorney at Dewey Hertzberg Levy Incorporated and host of the ‘Laws of Life with Garry Hertzberg’ on Cliffcentral.com writes:
A client of mine was the enraged recipient of a hefty speeding fine on one of our poorly signposted back roads.
Begrudgingly he decided that he would pay it as soon as possible to obtain the discount, but he didn’t want to make it easy for Metro police. He had an old paraffin drum which sat next to his back door into which he would throw all of his change on a daily basis. He’s been doing this for years, since the 70s, and the drum must have weighed about 25 kilograms.
To make the department’s life difficult, he decided to dump this barrel of change on the traffic department so that they would have to sit and count it. On his way there he phoned me to let me in on his devious scheme. Well, I’m glad he did. I had a similar situation with another client whose ex-husband wanted to pay her maintenance in coins in protest.
What he didn’t know, and what many people don’t know, is that piles of coins are not necessarily legal tender. Whilst all coins and notes ever issued by the Reserve Bank remain legal tender, there are limitations on how many coins can be accepted by vendors and they can refuse to accept coins as payment. Retailers and vendors do not have to accept more than R50 in silver coins, R5 in copper and 50 cents in brown coins.
The department would have been well within their rights to send him and his barrel of coins packing.
On another note, some of those coins in his barrel may have been worth far more than the fine he was going to pay. I recently read that the Afrikaans version of the 1965 1c coin can be worth up to R4 000 and an English 1965 50c coin could be worth up to R30 000. That’s quite a substantial speeding fine.
It may be worth digging around in your old piggy banks to see what treasures you have hidden away, particularly if you have any of the old shillings and pennies.
