Have Any French Francs Lying Around?

With all our military travels, we tend to have money from each of our visited countries lying around the house. At first, we collected the stuff...saying it was for our kids to enjoy. Well, now they have a huge jar of money...bills with Saddaam Hussein's mug to animals and scenery and other folks we have no clue who they are. Enough is enough. So, I started wondering...I wonder if any of this old money is worth anything now. Boy was I pleasantly surprised.

If you've still got French Francs, the Bank of France is still able to exchange those Francs for Euros til the year 2012. Since we are heading back to Germany soon, this was perfect timing. The exchange rate is something like four to one, so our 900 Franc will turn up some nice spending change.

Be sure to send your French Francs registered mail (so you can track it), to the address below. The best price to send something registered is through the USPS via Express Mail International. It'll cost you $25, so you have to be committed and have a large number of bills to make it worthwhile. In hindsight, we should've probably kept the darn things til we actually got over there! Anyway, they are only exchanging bills, so no coins. Be creative. If you have a lot of coins and have determined they have no collector value, turn them into jewelry, or even a key chain.

Here's the address:

Banque de France
Caisse Générale, Service 18
10 Boulevard Duclaux
63407 Chamalières Cedex - France

Good luck with it and let me know how it goes. Even if you don't plan to go over to Europe, your bank here in the US can exchange those Euros into US Dollars.

Update 3/28/08:

I got a registered letter in the mail today from the Bank of France. They typed up a nice little letter in French and English, showed me what the exchange rate was and stapled brand new crisp Euros to my letter. So, yes it does work, and yes, it was worth it!