It’s obviously still in circulation (I got one from a change machine the other day and quickly passed it on to a visibly annoyed cashier at McDonalds), but are they still making them, or have they given up?
I dunno. I think they made so many of them initially that they still have them in storage and let them out a few at a time. I use them at the Post Office because their vending machines dispense them. I just give them right back.
The thing is, if they would take the $1 bill out of circulation people would start to use the coins. However, the people in Congress are so spineless that they won’t do what is logical and efficient because they might hear a few complaints from the horse and buggy crowd.
“But I just bought this new buggywhip! What am I supposed to do with it now?!”
Well if you want to join the modern age, just get rid of money and use credit cards! 
Heh, I could think of a few things. 
According to the US Mint, about five million were produced so far this year.
From what I understand – no cites, saw it on a tv show years ago, sorry – $1 bills are used so frequently they have a very short useable life (1-2 years) before they have to be burned by the treasury dept and replaced by newly printed bills. I think that’s why so many foreign countries use $1 coins which last easily for decades.
Yeah, we need to toss out the $1 bills, and while we’re at it stop producing pennies and start rounding everything to the nearest nickel.
That was certainly one of the justifications used here when the $1 and $2 notes were replaced with coins in the 1980s and the higher denomination notes were changed from paper to polymer (supposedly lasting four times longer).
Good news: You win 5 million dollars.
Bad news: They’re Saccies. :smack:
They are still making them, but since 2001 they have only made them in smaller quantities which they sell in bulk on the mint’s website. They only released the 2000-2001’s into general circulation, with the bulk of the mintage being the year 2000.
We buy them 1000 pieces at the time for our coin shop, they cost us about $1.40 each in quantity, and we resell them for $2.00 each to collectors.
As long as the mint can book 5-10 million in profits by making them, they won’t stop…IMHO.
three cheers for canadian spines!!
We took the $1 bill out of circulation, and the $2. Never really missed them.
Well, the $2.00 has been superfluous here for a long time. I suspect if Thomas Jefferson didn’t have so many admirers who like seeing his face in print, the $2.00 bill would be ancient history here, too.
What?!? The change at the post office is always these stupid dollars – you can get them free if you sell or use the stamps, right?
…And actually, I should have amended: and who are these bozos that pay $2 for a $1 coin that’s widely available?
They aren’t widely available in mintages after 2001. They are paying a premium for 2002-05 mintages.
Blame the banks if you don’t see them.
The only way for a coin to get into circulation is for a bank to order it. And banks hate coins. They will usually charge a premium to businesses to handle coins.
The government keeps saying the coins are unpopular, but real people never even see them because the banks refuse to order them.
The $2.00 bill is gone in Canada, but replaced with a $2.00 coin: the twoonie. The $1.00 coin is the loonie (because the original version had a loon on it, and because that’s what many people thought of the idea at the time).
The $5.00 bill is next on the horizon from what I hear. I’m sure if it was put to a vote the majority of people would support discontinuing the penny and rounding to the nearest nickel.
Wrong. The government initially used WalMart to distribute them
Yeah, God forbid a democratically-elected body avoid doing something that they know would be massively unpopular :rolleyes:
From what I hear, the Mint and the vending machine industry are the two groups that like the idea of dollar coins. The Mint because coins last longer than bills, and the vending machine industry because bill acceptors are more expensive and less reliable than coin acceptors. The general public does not want dollar coins, no matter who you put on the face, or whether the coin is silver, gold, or molybdenum. Around here you only see dollar coins when you use the stamp machine at the post office. When I spend a dollar coin, 95% of the time the clerk will glare at the coin like it just made an offensive comment, and then toss it into the slot where they keep the rolls of coins.
I’d like to get rid of the penny, nickel, and dime, rounding everything to the nearest quarter. Get rid of the $1 bill and replace it with Sackies and increased production of the $2 bill or even a new $2 coin.