FRANCE: Francs a Lot

It was a clockwork heist that lasted just two minutes. In that brief time, the four stickup men netted what was probably the biggest holdup haul in French history: $3,540,000. But the question that bedeviled Frenchmen last week was what in the world the culprits thought they could do with their loot. The bandits had made off with newly minted, neatly packaged, bronze-colored ten-franc coins—1,770,000 of them, to be exact—that weighed 17.7 tons and would require nearly 30 cu. yds. of space merely to store. If the four bandits each spend $100 per day of their bulky loot without...

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