Chink, chink

The concept of legal tender has cropped up in these pages before.  The basic idea is to provide for a way for a debtor to pay his creditor which is fair to both parties, and therefore is to be accepted without question.  Most of the rules in fact are there to protect the creditor from unreasonable behaviour by the debtor - so for example if I were to turn up at your private house at two o'clock in the morning to pay off a business debt, you would be entitled to turn me away on the basis that that is neither the time nor place for such a transaction  In a recent case, the courts held that a creditor was entitled to refuse payment of a debt of some £800 which the debtor tried to pay all in small coins - pennies, tuppencies and such.  Of course the creditor could have accepted payment in that form, but the legal tender rules mean that he wasn't obliged to.