*OT* I do see your point about drug residue rubbing off and contaminating other bills. Makes sense. I also use a debit card quite a bit. It makes for less trips to the ATM for cash. It doesn't cost me anything extra to use a debit card, so why not. I'm sure the stores are charged a fee from VISA (in my case), but even with the charge, it's still probably cheaper than handling cash.
This is getting even further off topic, but it's interesting: A few years ago, a machinist friend of mine worked for awhile at company near here that makes coin counting equipment. He took me on a tour of the factory (not a large place), and showed me how the machines worked. The top model could separate coins by denomination, flipping the coins off of a rotating rubber covered circular disc that slanted down toward the outside edges. The coins were precisely flipped by a wheel which ran over the edge of the coin, pressing the edge into the rubber surface, and as the wheel continued on, the coin rebounded up and out off the rubber surface and into the mouth of the correct bag (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, etc). I don't remember how the machine was able to differentiate between denominations, but it was undoubtably a clever engineering feat. The coin bags hung around the outside of the circle, and upon reaching the exact weight, were automatically taken off and a new bag put on. All the operator had to do was dump mixed coins into the top of the machine.
The Mexico State owned telephone company had been accumulating the coins from its phone booths and just dumping them into an abandoned high-school gym. We're talking LOTS of coins. Anyway this Mexican phone company had ordered up three of these top model change counting machines to try to "clean up the mess". -GG-
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