Sacagawea Golden Dollars came and (mostly) vanished - What happened?

Factual Questions
41

I know that I mentioned this in another thread, but most days I have at least one SackyG dollar in my pocket, and sometimes a SusanB. The change machine in the breakroom at my office gives them out, and all the vending machines there take them. I think they’re pretty handy.

Since they’re in my pocket as a result, I do end up spending them at retail stores from time to time, and pretty much no one blinks at them. However, I have never received one as change from a human. I think that the stores just don’t stock up on them - they don’t bother getting both $1 bills and $1 coins to give change with, they just pick the bills, so they don’t go into circulation from the stores. Obviously, they’re not going to go into circulation from ATM’s either (most of the ones I see are $20s only, with a few being $20/$10s, or an occasional $20/$5).

So, if I have a $1 in my pocket, it came from the change machine at work (coin) or as change from a retail transaction (usually a bill). I think the main reason there aren’t more in circulation is that retail places haven’t switched over to that being their main choice for $1s.

42

Ok, let me rephrase: the only group that wants the dollar coin to succeed is the vending industry. I don’t doubt that there are industries on the other side of the (hehe) coin, as well, but THE major force, to the point of near exclusivity, in favor of the dollar coin, is the vending industry. They are the ones who got the Sackie minted.

43

Huh? The Sackie is noticeably bigger than the Suzie, isn’t it?

44

I’ve never seen a sackie. Anyone wanna send me one? :slight_smile:

Cash-registers: Many tills I’ve seen around Toronto have either two rows of four compartments, or one row with adjustable dividers. Of the single-row tills, often one compartment has an insert that divides it back-to-front.

As in the US, the Canadian 50-cent coin is rare. There were quite a few minted for the Queen’s fifty-year anniversary on the throne, and these were available in rolls from the post office, but they seem to have sunk into obscurity again.

One thing I am wondering… In Europe and Australia, the coins and notes use some or all of the following currency-unit values: 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000.

In Canada and the USA, the coins and notes at or above one dollar use values from the same list. However, below one dollar, the values are 0.01, 0.05. 0.10, 0.25, and 0.50.

Is one reason for the low usage of the 0.50 coin because we use a 0.25 coin? If we used a 0.20 coin instead, would there be more call for the 0.50 coin so that we could make change for half a dollar easily?

45

Sunspace: Two quick and dirty answers:

  1. The Sackie dollar is exactly the same size as the Canadian loonie, but round, a little brighter, and with a picture of Sacajwea instead of the Queen. Tell you what, next time I’m in T.O., I’ll leave one under the bench next to the revolving doors at Robarts library. Keep checking there :slight_smile:

  2. I have read an article (from an old coin-collecting tome, *Coins: Questions and Answers[/i) about the failed attempt to introduce a 20-cent piece to the US in the late 19th-century. It mused that the 25-cent piece was an “anomaly” in decimal coinage, but was prevalent in the US and Canada for historical reasons. You see, the first widely-used coinage in much of North America was the “piece-of-eight,” the old Spanish “dollar.” In lieu of small change, merchants used to cut the p-o-8 into 2, 4 or 8 pieces (hence the term “2 bits” for 25 cents). So many people were used to the idea of dealing with 50 and 25 cent pieces already. When the US Mint started making its own coins, they decided it was better to make coins that people were familiar with. Hence the 25- and 50-cent pieces.

Interestingly, the author noted that the US, Canada, and Newfoundland had all tried and failed to introduce 20-cent pieces.

46

You also get them in change from the Metrocard vending machines in NY, and also in Boston. But even I have never gotten one in change from a vendor, although nobody around here blinks at a customer paying with them.

But if you don’t take mass transit and use the postal employees at the windows instead of buying from the big stamp machines, I can see why you wouldn’t come across them. It’s also sad that Sacajawea is 3/4 face on the coin, she already has rounded cheeks, and after a little while she starts losing her features, like a statue in acid rain!

Baby is real cute, though. More Baby-Americans on money!

47

The way I’ve heard it, silver dollars were never really popular except in the West. Las Vegas was always a major center of silver dollar usage, and up until the early 1960’s, when the silver of a dollar began to be worth more than a dollar, there was no reason not to receive and spend them just as you would paper bills.

Regarding its general unpopularity elsewhere, though, it makes sense when you consider that, back then, a dollar was probably worth at least ten times as much as now. In those days, a salary of $20,000 was considered impressive. In fact, even 10 or 15K was nothing to shake a stick at, the latter figure being mentioned, in a contemporary Scientific American ad, as a salary to which engineers might aspire after obtaining an MS. So, yeah, I can see why people didn’t want to carry dollars then. I wouldn’t want a coin that was worth $10.00 either. But the dollar in 2003 is like a dime then, and those who were alive then but passed on before the massive inflation of the late 1960’s and 1970’s, would be bemused and perplexed that we still have pennies (now worth one of their Blue Chip Stamps), and that we, alone of the developed world, refuse to give up the paper monetary unit.

48

The way I’ve heard it, silver dollars were never really popular except in the West. Las Vegas was always a major center of silver dollar usage, and up until the early 1960’s, when the silver of a dollar began to be worth more than a dollar, there was no reason not to receive and spend them just as you would paper bills.

Regarding its general unpopularity elsewhere, though, it makes sense when you consider that, back then, a dollar was probably worth at least ten times as much as now. In those days, a salary of $20,000 was considered impressive. In fact, even 10 or 15K was nothing to shake a stick at, the latter figure being mentioned, in a contemporary Scientific American ad, as a salary to which engineers might aspire after obtaining an MS. So, yeah, I can see why people didn’t want to carry dollars then. I wouldn’t want a coin that was worth $10.00 either. But the dollar in 2003 is like a dime then, and those who were alive then but passed on before the massive inflation of the late 1960’s and 1970’s, would be bemused and perplexed that we still have pennies (now worth one of their Blue Chip Stamps), and that we, alone of the developed world, refuse to give up the paper monetary unit.

49

<old fogey mode>

I remember when I was 5 years old in the late sixties, and my mother was able to fill the car with bags and bags of Christmas groceries for $25. These days, the turkey costs more than that.

OTOH, a “long-distance phone call” was a rare and remembered thing. Especially when it was from Aunt Eldine in Germany.

In 1970, my parents bought a large 2-storey-plus-basement three-bedroom house on an 80-foot-x-120-foot lot in an established area of Whitby, Ontario… for $17000. Heck, even in 1984, a 15-thousand-dollar car was unusual and expensive, rather than “cheap”.

</old fogey mode>

Canada went through the same kind of inflation as well.

50

The way I’ve heard it, silver dollars were never really popular except in the West. Las Vegas was always a major center of silver dollar usage, and up until the early 1960’s, when the silver of a dollar began to be worth more than a dollar, there was no reason not to receive and spend them just as you would paper bills.

Regarding its general unpopularity elsewhere, though, it makes sense when you consider that, back then, a dollar was probably worth at least ten times as much as now. In those days, a salary of $20,000 was considered impressive. In fact, even 10 or 15K was nothing to shake a stick at, the latter figure being mentioned, in a contemporary Scientific American ad, as a salary to which engineers might aspire after obtaining an MS. So, yeah, I can see why people didn’t want to carry dollars then. I wouldn’t want a coin that was worth $10.00 either. But the dollar in 2003 is like a dime then, and those who were alive then but passed on before the massive inflation of the late 1960’s and 1970’s, would be bemused and perplexed that we still have pennies (now worth one of their Blue Chip Stamps), and that we, alone of the developed world, refuse to give up the paper monetary unit.

51

I still don’t think a dollar coin is a good idea. I routinely carry 5 to 15 singles in my wallet (if not more) and there’s just no way I would want to carry that many dollar coins in my pocket!

Hell, 4 quarters is too many…

Here’s the official Sacky site.

52

So, Spectre of Triplepost, it was a Las Vegas-style “Dollar Coin”?

53

You won’t. You’ll make a point of not having more than 5. Why carry 15 singles instead of 3 fives?

With the exception of the cash drawer thing, I’ve never seen anyone present an objection that I didn’t hear here back when the loonie was introduced. And I don’t know a single person who wants to go back to paper ones. I myself had my doubts when they introduced the two dollar coin, but I wouldn’t want to go back to paper twos either.

Seriously, do you like paying higher taxes for the privilege of trying to get vending machines to accept tattered ones?

54

Derleth, I have already reported my triple post to the moderators. I kept getting the “Page Not Found” error, so I didn’t realize my posts were getting through.

Based on the fact that silver was only worth thirty or forty cents an ounce, in 1960, and that a dollar weighed slightly less than an ounce, I always imagined that real, pre-1935 dollars were used there.

Speaking of silver dollars, it’s interesting to me that, as a symbol, they have never really gone away. One occasionally sees a financial pie chart superimposed on a a picture of a Morgan dollar, last minted in 1921!

55

In one of the many “What do you think of the sackie?” threads that were brought up a while ago: Sure, they might not fit into the G-String all that well, but at least you get to walk into the place with a roll of coins in your pocket.

56

I don’t think so. I keep reading that the average lifespan of a dollar bill is only 18 months or so, while coins last for years and years. So, in the long run, it’s cheaper to mint coins for use as dollars…and the long run might not be all that long. <google>

This site says that the coins cost four times as much as the bills to make, but last 30 times longer. Other sites say pretty much the same thing.

57

Lynn, as I said in the last post of the first page of the following thread, I haven’t found anybody else who is willing to say they did it, and the vending lobby sure is proud of themselves.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=141313&highlight=dollar+coins+vending

58

If anything, put him on the Ten. The Ten is basically the U.S. Treasury’s love letter to themselves. I don’t think most Americans would know who Alex Hamilton was if he wasn’t on the Ten. And I’m sure there are more interesting landmarks than the Treasury Building you can put on the back. (Maybe the Statue of Liberty with the World Trade Center behind it? That way you get a symbol of freedom and a 9/11 tribute all on the same bill.)

59

Derleth

Begging your pardon, but the Kennedy dollar is an extremely rare coin.

Now, the Kennedy HALF dollar, on the other hand…

60

Right, so we can buy a dime bag with a bill featuring our most famous hemp farmer. :wink: