Amsterdam - Money

Last Updated: September 4, 1999
The Netherlands currency is the Guilder. Monetary amounts are denoted various ways (depending if you're in the country or out of it), but you often see things like "f10" meaning ten Guilders. The "f" comes from "Florin," another name for the money.

All of this is soon to be moot: The Netherlands will switch to the Euro. However, the coins are worth discussing as a cautionary historical note. There are two sets of coins: new ones and older ones. The older ones have a simple picture on the back (the queen, of course, is on the front). The new ones keep the queen on the front, but it appears that the treasury made a terrible, terrible mistake in designing the back: they let a mathematician type design the back.

On the back of the new coins, you will see some thin lines (vertical, vertical and horizontal, or vertical, horizontal and diagonal) and a thick bar. These symbols denote the value of the coin. To compute the value, perform the following computation:

  1. Count the number of directions of the lines, d. d will be 1, 2, or 3.
  2. Compute 10^d (10, 100, or 1000) and treat this as cents. This is the base unit from which we will compute the value of the coin. Thus, we have one of 10c, f1, or f10.
  3. Look at the thick bar. It'll either be solid, it'll be split into two pieces, or it'll be split into four pieces.
  4. Divide the base unit of the coin by the number of pieces into which the solid bar is divided. This gives you the value of the coin.
  5. Example: A coin with just vertical lines and a solid bar divided into 2 pieces. The base unit is 10^1=10cents. Divided by 2 means this is a 5 cent coin.
Fortunately, they also write the value of the coin as a number, so you don't need to use a calculator to figure out if you have correct change.