We are just getting ready to go out for the day in lovely Vilnius, Lithuania. I had wanted to post this before, after a couple weeks, I totally forget.
We always get a bit of starter cash for our trips (especially since we seem to hit different countries with different currencies) because it's convenient for us. I have read all the posts with reasons not to such as poor exchange rates aren't good or it's not safe and so forth.
Upon arriving last night we went for a stroll and wanted something to eat - something small - and rather than go to a restaurant we spotted a cafe with a lot of gelato (ahh, lucky us!). When I went to pay with a 20 litas bill the young woman kind of said very loudly "too old" and said something else to the crowd (clearly in Lithuanian). I was a bit stunned but then she grabbed another 20 litas bill from another customer and put it next to mine. Mine was from 1997 and the coloring is different than the one next to it from 2001. Luckily, I had a couple 10's that were in the 2000 range that were sufficient.
When we got back to the hotel we asked the reception what the deal was and they explained the 'older' bills are just not accepted and he asked where we ever found that money. (How embarrassing!) So, we took out what cash we had and went through it with the gentleman - he showed us the ones with 1990's were too "old" but that we could go to the bank and exchange them for newer ones and they would get rid of the old(this impacted about half of the cash which we didn't actually have that much of). He was even happy to accompany us to a local 24 hour bank but we decided we'll go over there today and take care of it.
This would be the last reason that would ever occur to me to NOT purchase money in the USA prior to leaving so I wanted to share with everyone. I didn't know money got "old"! Wish us luck that this doesn't happen in Latvia, Estonia or Russia!