Clovis Fouin's wooden box of centimes was too heavy to carry, so he noisily kicked it along the pavement outside the Bank of France's august headquarters in freezing temperatures to meet the deadline Thursday to exchange old French coins for euros.

Fouin, 16, who won most of his coins at a general knowledge competition seven years ago, estimated he had about €100. Asked why he had waited so long to change them over, he rubbed his disheveled head and said: "Well, I just wasn't thinking about it."

He was not alone.

More than three years after the European Union introduced the single currency, untold numbers are still holding on to stashes of old currencies that they have not been able to spend since 2002.

So many people have been streaming into Bank of France branches in recent days that the bank's overworked counting machines need weeks to sort through the vast quantities.

Rather than leaving with cash in euros, Fouin emerged from the bank with a crumpled deposit certificate entitling him to pick up his money March 14.

"It's a matter of confidence," a bank official replied when asked how people could be sure they would get all that was due to them.On Wednesday alone, 30,000 people redeemed coins at Bank of France branches from the Ile de France region, which includes Paris, to Ajaccio in Corsica, according to a bank spokeswoman speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

As of Jan. 31, Bank of France officials had already collected 6.4 billion coins worth €1.4 billion since introducing the euro, which is used by 12 countries, on Jan. 1, 2002.

That figure could rise sharply once officials count this week's deposits.

Most euro-using countries set some deadlines for handing in so-called legacy currencies: the francs, marks, lira and others that went out of circulation a few months after the euro arrived.

It's already too late to hand in coins in Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg and Portugal, according to the European Commission's Web site. The Dutch have set a Jan. 1, 2007, deadline for coins, while Italy and Finland will wait until Feb. 29, 2012. The four countries with no deadlines for either notes or coins are Austria, Ireland, Germany and Spain.

The crazy quilt of rules on the validity of old currencies are a legacy of a decision by EU members not to force changes in previously existing procedures for replacing worn-out bills and coins, central bank officials said.

Most countries, for example, had experience circulating out old designs of their national currencies, and replacing them with a new series, so the creators of the European Central Bank saw no reason to design new approaches.

Each of the national central bank's traditions "have been carried over onto the euro system," a spokesman for the ECB said, also on regular condition of anonymity.

The Bank of France, for example, is over 200 years old and has therefore had long experience setting limits on the validity of French bills and coins. By contrast, Germany's much younger Bundesbank had a policy of redeeming any Deutsche mark into the existing currency, now the euro.

"It's a symbol of trust, and we think it strengthens the credibility of the currency," said a Bundesbank spokesman, Wolf-Rüdiger Bengs.

Outside the Bank of France, Soraya Ahmadi, 58, arrived at 5:30 a.m. and bought coffee for the handful of people waiting in the cold.

By 9 a.m., about 150 people had formed a line that was constantly being replenished as the morning wore on.

Early birds got euros, but the machines were backed up after little more than an hour, and clerks started handing out the slips.

Ange Elong, 32, was lugging two bright blue sacks from the IKEA furniture chain, which she had filled with coins after hearing about the deadline on the radio.

She was hoping they will pay for a friend to fly from New York to attend her wedding in Italy later this year.

"I'm one of those poorly organized people who does absolutely everything at the last minute," Elong said.

Holders of French banknotes face their first important deadline on Nov. 30, when 50-franc bills come due.

Holders of other notes, including the 200-franc and 100-franc notes, can wait until Feb. 17, 2012.

In fact, some visitors to the Bank of France left with old francs still jingling in their pockets.

Iliane Fabbro, 58, said she decided to hang on to a few coins to pass onto her children, grateful that her own parents left her examples of giant French banknotes from a bygone era.

"I think it's nice to pass these things on to your kids," she said.

Carter Dougherty contributed reporting from Frankfurt.

[EuroTracer's Comment: When I exchanged my last franc (s. the resulting notes and coins), it was a warm day and the Bank of France was nearly empty.]

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