What is the largest amount you can send/wire overseas?

What amount of change requires the largest number of coins?

• What amount of change between 0$ and 1$ requires the greatest amount of coins? Of course, I mean which amount requires the largest minimum number of coins, so this invalidates answers such as "99¢ in the form of pennies".

• Answer:

  $.99 of course (and not in the form of pennies). You get there with at least eight coins: 50+25+2*10+4*1 It's easy to see that you can't require more than eight coins, because you can't increase the number of any of the coin types without creating a combination that could be obtained with less coins. Let's see: If you increase the number of pennies to five, you could do better with a nickel. If you include a nickel, you could change the two dimes and the nickel for a quarter. If you increase the number of dimes to three, you could change that for a quarter and a nickel. If you increase the number of quarters to two, you could change that for a half. Obviously you can't include two halves. It's also fairly easy to see that the only other amount requiring at least eight coins is $.94, but this margin is too narrow to include the proof!