Attention getter title–sorry. 
When do the new $1 coins get issued? Soon?
Save The Endangered Jackalope! Send Cash Now! If You Do This, I Will Use The Cash To Save Any Jackalope That I Happen To Find! Send Cash Now! Before It’s Too Late! My Bills, I Mean The Jackalope’s Bills Are Due The 15th Of The Month!
This has been a message from the Illuminated Committee To Save The Jackalope. Fnord.
I thought they were issued every year. Maybe not in enough quantity to be seen in circulation very much, though.
If you mean the newest dollar coins, maybe this will help.
http://www1.usmint.gov/GoldenDollar/
They are scratch and sniff so blind folks can tell which is which now. The old ‘fold a coin corner’ was toomuch work.
JimB wrote:
$1 coins have not been minted since 1981. The new Sacajewia dollars will be the first time the U.S. has put new one-dollar coins into circulation in 19 years. (Unless you count the one ounce silver Eagle coins, which are officially stamped “one dollar” but are actually worth about five dollars. But these coins aren’t intended for circulation anyway.)
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
Sorry, I misread the section on proof sets, I thought they included the dollar coin for that year. The new proof sets include the new dollar coin, sorry.
They’re called the Golden Dollar, but there ain’t no gold in them thar coins. Hmph.
tracer stated that a belief that U.S. $1 coins have not been minted since 1981.
They have also minted a few general circulation Susan B. Anthony dollars this year (1999-P and 1999-D). Yes, after a lapse of 18 years, just months before they are about to be replaced, they minted some more Anthony dollars–don’t ask me how the government works.
In any event, I bought stamps from a post office machine yesterday, and my $7 in change consisted of seven 1999-P Anthony dollars.
Certain vending machines and public-transit systems use the Susie B’s, and, by a miracle of misplaced timing, this year there was finally a shortage of the things, so, since the new coins weren’t ready to go, a last few of the old design had to be minted.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
The post office only uses Susies for $1 change… soon they’ll probably only be using… uh… sackies?
About ten years ago, Imponderables author David Feldman said the government was planning to issue “a gold-colored coin bearing the image of Christopher Columbus” some time in the future. I guess they chose Sacagawea instead because Columbus was too ‘politically incorrect.’