As said by many above, the Sackies are a different color than other coins.
It is also larger, and in my opinion the difference is significant: The diameter of a quarter is 24.26 mm, and a Sackie is 26.49 – that’s almost 10%. And the quarter is 1.75 mm thick, with the Sackie at 2.00 – that’s almost 15%! Compare the weight too: the quarter is a paltry 5.67 g, and the Sackie more than 40% heavier at 8.10 g.
And on top of all that, a quarter has ridged edges, while the Sackie is smooth. I honestly don’t understand why people complain that they can’t tell the difference. (I suspect that they haven’t gotten over the trauma of the Susan Anthonys.)
Some people will always have a hard time learning. Some people in Britain in the late 60s confused the newly-introduced 50p coin with the old two shilling (10p) coin. Even the fact that one wasn’t circular wasn’t enough for them.
The obvious solution is to introduce a completely new set of coins. The low denomination ones must surely have reached the point at which most people wouldn’t bother to pick one up if they dropped it. We have one penny coins, worth a little over a cent. I dropped one yesterday and just left it. When I get them in change I invariably drop them into the conveniently placed charity tin.
Maybe re-value a cent (newcent) to be a tenth of a Dollar? Then all you would need would be ones, twos and fives, as well as Dollars. You should probably go for the five Dollar bill and make that a coin too.
I threw a 50-cent coin in a Florida tollroad basket once. It confiscated my coin, refused to credit it, and flashed red lights all over the place as if I was a criminal.
I travel in Canada fairly often, and have gotten quite comfortable with receiving Loonies and Toonies in change from a $5 bill. We really need to get with the program.
We already have a one-tenth-dollar coin, as well as a coin worth 5X that.
A two-tenths unit would make mathematical sense, but would conflict with the quarter. You’ll notice, Europe adopted a consistent 1-2-5-10 pattern including twenty-eurocent (and two-euro) coins, but Canada still has quarter-dollars.
They can. I can draw either a quarter or a dollar from a pocket of random mixed US coins, only by feel, with one hundred percent accuracy. It doesn’t require any thought or effort, just a little habituation to using cash and coins, with dollar coins in the mix.
The vending machine issue is the one and (almost) only reason dollar coins are not larger. The vending machine industry does not want to replace every single vending machine in the country to handle physically larger coins, and they convinced lawmakers of this.
the biggest problem with dollar coins is they won’t take the frickin’ dollar bill out of circulation. People are resistant to change, but eventually you need to say “tough.”
of course, I’m sure the lone paper supplier to the BEP has some congressweasel friends who help keep them in business.
