I happen to like dollar coins, and go out of my way to get a few. While having a few dollars in my pocket is not that much easier than getting my wallet out, it is very nice to be able to throw a few in my car, few in my backpack, that way when I seem to have forgot my wallet (happens often enough I figured this out) I still have enough to get lunch or a bottle of water.
Occasionally also confuses the hell out of a young cashier. Kinda amusing too.
First they got rid of one peseta coins, then the peseta entirely. Next it’s legalized gay marriage. Coincidence? I think not!
Oh, well, if currency reform leads to legalized gay marriage, I’m going to have to rethink the whole thing!
I am all for retiring dollar bills in favor of dollar coins. I am astonished that anybody would really prefer dollar bills to coins if the coins were more widely available and accepted.
I think it is obvious that people will continue to use dollar bills in preference to the coin, since they are used to them, and they are far more numerous in circulation. The government can’t address issue #1, but can #2 (i.e., by producing more dollar coins than bills, and gradually phasing out/ending the printing of dollar bills). But they haven’t, and I wish they would.
For you lovers of the paper Washington: what do you really use dollar bills (individually) for anyway? Think about it.
How many times have you tried to get a dang soda machine to accept your faded, folded, or whatever-else-it-doesn’t-like-about-it dollar bill? No problem with a coin!
How about having to have 12 or more quarters (“Quarters Only”) on hand to feed into a parking meter? I hate that!! Versus having a couple of dollar coins? No problem!
How many dollar bills do you carry around anyway? Probably not many; you can’t buy very much with just a dollar any more. You likely have less than five at any given time, and trade up if you have five or more. Sounds pretty much like what quarters used to be like 25 years ago in your pocket, doesn’t it?
In fact, I wish there were a $2.50 coin… I would actually have so much LESS change and small bills if there were such a thing!
[Maxwell Smart]
Would you believe gay currency?
[/ms]
I disagree, there is a problem, the government pisses away a fortune on printing costs for the low denomination paper bills. They should be replaced with coins.
I’m now looking at the colours of Canadian currency in a whole new light…
Actually I haven’t had any bills rejected in the last … can’t recall it happening in the last 10 years. I do recall being surprised that a machine took a bill that looked really old though. I have had a machine eat my dollar coin. I had to spend 10 minutes arguing with the guy to get my change back. They said they didn’t take dollar coins. My response was that it had a picture of a dollar coin on the machine! They didn’t believe me yet wouldn’t come out to look they did however relent and gave me 4 quarters which I had to sign for.
I don’t know how many people end up with so many coins and cash. Unless you’re atrocious at math you shouldn’t be like that. Whenever I buy something I have a small amount of coins, look at the price, see that I’m 12¢*, see if I can hit 12 cents if so I lay it down. I can also lay down quarters to get a dollar, dollars to get 5 dollar bill. Kindergarten math. I never have more then 10 coins.
People always say it’ll be cheaper (If I recall correctly dollar bills still make money as do pennies, just not as much per piece as the coins) but what about the cost to transport all that extra weight. Google search shows $1 weighs 1 gram. The coins weigh a little over 8 grams. That means more gas is used to transport equal amounts of wealth. Also 100 bills stacks fairly small, 100 coins do not. That means extra space needs to be used in transportation which again means more money has to be spent to move them about. I’m curious as to whether or not that has been accounted for.
As I said a few years ago in the same debate I’d much rather revalue American money up 10 times. So new penny equal old dime. Also why all the extra denominations? Why not just a 1, 5 and 25 (or 20) coin and 1, 5, 25 (or 20), 100, 500 bills. Why keep things like the 10 and 50 cent coin, 2 and 10 dollar bill? Then you could make any amount between 1 cent and $100 with 12 coins and 13 bills. Then we could save some real money by have cash registers 20% skinnier! Think of all that wasted plastic, metal and shelf space.
*What the hell! Using Firefox 1.5 when I type ALT + 0162 it takes me cursor from the reply box and puts it in the Google quick search bar. Get rid of the toolbar and my cursor just disappears! How annoying.
Sorry I was distracted by the annoying thing happening. It should read like this.
Actually going to the quarter is easy but to stay at 10 or less you have to go pennies to the nickle, nickles to the dime, nickles & dimes to the quarter and quarters to the dollar. This can be tricky.
The dollar bill will never go away. The Crane Paper Company is in Massachusetts, and their congressional delegation will not let us go to cheaper coins. It is more important to save a few featherbedding jobs that to save the people money.
BTW, is it just me, or does the US have the ugliest money on Earth? They ought to have a contest to redesign it.
Aren’t contests how we end up with most of our state quarter designs?
Why on earth does the article think these new dollar coins are going to make me want to use the Sackie more? I’ll use it a hell of a lot less. With the new batch, when I get a hankering to spend a $1 coin, I will be able to use one that looks respectable* instead of a coin that looks like a token to play the claw game down at Show Biz Pizza. I hate the color and size of the Sackie. There. I said it.
*hopefully. haven’t seen the design of course.
Tipping strippers! If you take away the 1$ bill, strippers will need to dance twice as long for every Jefferson they get!
Won’t someone please think of the strippers?
I have been here in the Kingdom for six months. I will be home in February. At this point I think of little else but strippers.
I must have missed the news report where congressional Democrats begged President Bush to please, please switch to coins because paper money is bankrupting us. The general public likes their dollar bills just fine, so why force people to use a coin that has been soundly rejected at least three times already?
I’ve heard that argument before but I don’t understand it. Why does the government win if money goes into coin collections? Say they put out a million quarters. Why is the government better off if they are in piggy banks rather than being spent? I suspect the effect on the money supply is quite small, so why should they care if I put my quater in my piggy bank or in a gumball machine?
A problem does exist. We have a mountain of currency out there that is practically worthless. Name all of the items in your life that you can buy, in a single complete transaction, for 10 cents or less. At most you have a parking meter, and you probably throw 2 dimes in anyway, just in case you get stuck on a line at the store. That’s 3 coins where you can’t buy a darn thing worth buying.
Note how we treat our coins today in contrast to how they were treated years ago. It seems normal today to get home, pull a handful of change from your pocket and throw it in a jar. People use coins today because they don’t want them weighing down their pockets. Back in the day, people treated coins like money, not change. You would pick up coins from your desk before going to work, because you could actually use them to buy something, rather than just using them to use them up.
They are sad, worthless, pieces of metal. You need 10 pounds of them to generate anything worth bringing to the bank. Long gone are the days where you would reach into your pocket, pull out a coin, and pay for breakfast, or even a coffee. Forget a $1 coin, I say we need a $5 coin.
Thanks! I was thinking general release coinage, not special sales where they can pump up the price. At those prices, they could make a mint!
I often use machines that will not take an older one dollar bill–it’s very annoying.
The Metra trains in Chicago give change in Sackies–they’re ok.
My husband loves the $2 bill. He is a banker and has made it his personal responsiblity to spread this currency all over the Chicagoland area.
Sales clerks glare at me–and the cafeteria ladies at school berate my kids about the money. Grrr. I don’t like the $2 bill, but do like the notion of a dollar coin or a 2 dollar coin–why not make it a 2.50 coin? Would that cut down on change?
Unles we round everything off, we can’t get rid of pennies. I see no reason to get rid of nickels or dimes, either–although I do keep a carafe of change to convert at the bank, and rarely use it. Ever since I-Pass, I dont’ need the change for tolls.
I like our greenbacks–I don’t want pink money. Hell, I already think of bills as so much Monopoly money-pastel colors etc will make that worse!