Costa Rican Money
'colones'
In Costa Rica the currency is el colón (plural colones), named after the
Columbus, the man who arrived on the Caribbean shores of Costa Rica on a tip from some
Caribbean Indians that this "Rich Coast" had great, shiny mineral wealth (bling, if you will).
Columbus still ended up getting some "bling" out of his troubles, as all of the bills that are
printed and all of the coins that are minted bear his namesake. Today his hip hop stage name
would probably be either Kris-toph, The Imperial Gangsta, C-bus, or C-note (although Costa Rica no
longer prints bills of
100 colones).
Colón denominations
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5 - Smallest denomination that is just under one cent of $USD in 2007 (a single colón no longer exists). The smallest
denomination used to be 5 céntimos (5 cents of a colón), but inflation has kicked
in to make such an amount laughable. Costa Rica has not had its lowest denomination of the number one
in quite some time. For this reason, when Costa Ricans are broke they say "no tengo ni un cinco"
meaning "I don't even have a five colón piece".
-
10 - Ten colones
-
20 - Twenty colones
-
25 - Twenty-five colones
-
50 - Fifty colones coin that is sometimes referred to as media teja.
-
100 - One hundred colones, also referred to as a teja, is a very
useful coin. The price for most things usually requires the use of at least one "teja".
Consequently, people usually say the price for things with respect to this coin. "Dos tejas y
media", your bus driver may tell you.
-
500 - Five hundred colones, the largest coin for the Costa Rican colón.
-
1000 - One thousand colones, the smallest-valued bill in Costa Rica,
is also rojo.
-
2000 - Two thousand colones
-
5000 - Five thousand colones, referred to as tucán for the
toucan that is featured on the bill.
-
10,000 - Ten thousand colones, also referred to informally as teja.
Even though most Costa Ricans will say that una teja is a 100 colón coin, many
Costa Ricans refer to 10,000 colones as una teja when the context makes it
obvious that la teja in question is not a measely 100 colones.
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