Yes, of course paper money is preferable to coinage; it’s easier to carry about. That hardly makes the money worthless and therefore unnecessary. No one’s arguing that paper money is seen as less desirable than coins.
The question is really whether coins are desirable at all, and of course they are. Most people won’t reject $10 in pennies if bills are not an option.
My daughter loves pennies. If I dump some change on the counter, she’ll go through and take all the pennies. If she sees them on the ground, she’ll pick them up. All her friends at school give her pennies. She dumps them in a big jar, and periodically, she’ll roll them and deposit them in her savings account. Interestingly, this obsession began after she got her first job and learned what it meant to earn money.
Paper money is less desirable than coins. If I was offered $10 as 1000 coins I’d be more likely to take it than if it was 1000 bills, and I’d be more likely to take it if it was 2 coins than if it was 2 bills, although I admit we’re dealing with probabilities very close to either 0% or 100% here ;). (Of course, there are no such things as 1¢ bills or $5 coins.) But, I would be much more likely to take it as 2 bills than 1000 coins. This has much more to do with the denomination than the form, though.
Just curious - why would you be more likely to take a thousand coins instead of a thousand bills? Same amount of money.
I think I covered this twice. This thread is in IMHO, not GD or The Pit, for a reason … you are taking it much more seriously than I am.
I stop to pick them up just whenever doing so would not significantly interrupt traffic or result in my getting run over.
But, I rarely use them - or much of any change. I pretty much use bills and quarters, or plastic. Not sure where all the dimes, nicks, and pennies go.
Best bet, my kids probably spend them on whatever they spend their money on. Candy, most likely.
I don’t think I’m taking it more seriously than you are. You asked for suggestions. Suggestions were given. You disliked many of the suggestions. Were you just kidding when you asked for them?
Oh, heck. Maybe you were. Maybe you were being tongue in cheek. Or just cheeky. Anyway, my apologies.
You can still feed pennies into Illinois toll booths. That’s how I get rid of all of mine. When I throw in 50 pennies, it takes about an extra 3-5 seconds for the gate to come up.
Well in general I agree with you. I wish the dollar coin had caught on, that they would stop making one-dollar-bills, and for that matter maybe even five-dollar-bills, but that’s a whole other debate.
With things as they are, though, I’d certainly rather have one paper dollar than one hundred pennies.
Yes, I agree. I said sort of the same thing.
I’ve been trying to think if I would really rather have 1000 pennies or 1000 bills, if they had the same total value. Both situations are pretty preposterous. If they were loose, in a plastic bag or something, the pennies would take up less volume but more mass. For 1000, I would probably go with coins, but for 10,000, I would probably go with bills, even though it would take a garbage bag.
If the pennies were rolled into 20 rolls, and the bills were stacked into 10 stacks, it would be close. I can probably carry each of those equally easily. I don’t know.
Yes and no. I am utterly serious in my distaste, but I confess to playing it up a bit for dramatic effect (probably poorly executed). My threads rarely elict much response, y’know. No harm done.
Yup. 
My piggy bank was a 3’ tall beer bottle I won at a fair yonks ago. This thing was only about half full when I cashed it in for just over $400.
As mentioned, not only do I save my own change, but pick up what others have dropped as well. You never know when a few extra quid/dollars will come in hand.
Blame this on my folks. They used to have several wine jugs around the house. I loved counting them out. Every once in a while they would let me go cash them in and we’d do something special.
Me and my sons took some pennies to the rail road tracks for squishing today, big fun.
I’ve never done this. Is it nifty as everyone makes it out to be? Do they turn out like those penny squishing machines make?
Ah, the bus fare and the trolley quid. Since our town got a Morrison’s, I have to remember to keep one pound coin for the trolley in my wallet at all times (the other supermarkets had trolleys free from the bondage of the coin operated deposit slot and chain).
I’m one of those who delights in paying for things with the exact change. I’m apologetic when I have to break a twenty.
I find this to be quite perplexing. An exact change lane that accepts pennies? Thought they’d outlawed that. Like you say, it takes 3-5 seconds for the machine to understand you’ve tossed in enough change; I guess they go down slowly so it can discern one from the next. Still, weird.
I wouldn’t mind the dollar coin in place of the bill. In place of, that is. When they’ve introduced it in the past, they haven’t attempted to get rid of the bill, believing instead that they can exist arm in arm in total harmony. Except most people would keep the bills as things stand now, because there are few machines that take dollar coins, while most do take dollar bills.
And then there’s the whole deal with laundramats. Do any of them take dollar coins? I bet they’re rare. Or change machines? Or arcades?
To make the coin palatable to everyone, those machines should all be changed to accept the coins - and then you get phase out the bills.
Washte wrote
Oh, it’s the coolest. Sometimes you gotta place 'em just right or they only get a little mushed. Usually, you can see a bit of the image on the front and back, but stretched of course. and the shape, like you suspect is a long oval.
I may have to give this a try. We have a train line nearby.
Sounds loads of fun 
Thanks Bill H!
I don’t understand why you don’t spend the damn things. If something comes to $1.47 and you give them two bucks and two pennies - guess what - you won’t get any pennies back ! Amazing. Better still, give them $1.52 (assuming you don’t have exact change). Simple.
I do this and I also never have more than four pennies on me. And it really doesn’t make my life any more difficult - probably easier, because I have less metal to carry around with me.
Since I can never remember to decline them at the counter, I give them to little kids. It smacks of Hints from Heloise, but what I do is put my pennies in those little velvet jewelry bags I always seem to have too many of, as well. Whenever I know I’m going to be hanging around a yard-ape or two, I take a couple of bags with me and am instantly a hero. This is impressive only to kids under six or seven years old and I check with parents to make sure the pennies won’t end up stuck in the kid’s nose.
Since you don’t even want them in your house, skip bagging them and give them to the first kid you see.