They do those because they sell well to collectors, and help create a new generation of collectors. They’re marketing gimmicks that actually bring in substantial revenue.
You originally mentioned counterfeiting. There’s essentially zero chance that anyone is massively counterfeiting dollar coins (it’s harder and more expensive to mint coins than to print on paper/fabric, and the rewards are two orders of magnitude lower), so the risk there is even lower than with bills.
I really don’t care what happens, I never pay with actual currency. The only use I have for coins is quarters for the toll roads, when I rarely take them. I am jealous of you guys who have 800 bucks in coins sitting around your house though. Damn!
But it doesn’t make sense for me to do so. I don’t make many small purchases in a typical day; usually I have one purchase of a few dollars. A $20 turns into $5’s and $1’s, the $5’s turn into more ones, the $1’s get spent and eventually the cycle repeats with another $20.
For coins to be at all convenient in general I’d need another pocket, or perhaps a cellphone holster. I keep my phone in one pocket and keys/change/other bits in the other. But digging change out from under my keys takes forever compared to pulling out my wallet.
Anyway, you do bring up a good point. The real effect of dollar coins would be to make me switch to credit cards whenever humanly possible. I already use them for most stuff now that the CC companies don’t require signatures for small purchases, and now that internet connections make the transaction almost instant.
The only thing more annoying than a load of change in my pocket is for the customer ahead of me pull out a handful of change and take the better part of a minute to pick out the right amount.
Your billionaire uncle has left you his fortune: a warehouse full of 100 billion pennies. Of course, he was as mad as a hatter, and left a caveat in the will: you have to pick them up one at a time, from standing straight to bent/crouched and back.
How long do you think you’d last?
Since when is a few hundred bucks in change “rich”? Only the least financially responsible people imaginable have that little money in savings, and for most bank accounts there’s zero difference between a pile of change and money in the bank.
Why do you think those CoinStar machines are all over the place? You don’t think people are trading in $3 at a time, do you? No, lots people collect huge piles of coins because they’re so annoying, and are even willing to pay a 10% fee to get rid of them.
I beg your pardon, but that is simply not true. Many younger people have little or no money in savings, and plenty of other things (e.g. medical bills) can reduce people to living paycheck-to-paycheck with no savings.
Having prowled the Internet for various material about this latest fiasco, I read where one person commented that retailers have to pay to have coins and currency delivered to them. I’m hoping samclem or any other retail businesspeople here can confirm this, because citing a blog comment seems rather pointless. Anyhow, the comment went on to point out that the bills are lighter than coins and presumably take up less room in the truck, so they’re cheaper for the retailer.
If that’s the case, then the only way a dollar coin would ever work is to eliminate not only the $1 bill, but also the penny at the same time. Then the cost of delivery might be more or less a wash.
I believe the coin haters are overestimating the the public’s antipathy towards the dollar coin, as if one might have well asked the public to accept judicial combat as a way of resolving civil lawsuits. Given widespread consistent availability, you’d see a significant portion of consumers preferring the coins, but that point becomes moot if the retailers have a concrete bottom line reason for preferring paper dollars. Yet, even so I still don’t get how counting out four thickish coins to hand back to the customer isn’t miles easier than peeling off four dollar bills. But what do I know; I’ve never worked in retail.
I should have added “excluding exceptional circumstances, such as medical expenses or the like”. However, youth is no excuse unless you’re talking about a kid abandoned by his/her parents.
How much would your average supermarket lose if it rounded every cash transaction down to the nickel and adopted a pennyless store policy? I assume the store losses would be somewhat offset by the cost and labor saved from no longer having to deal with a bunch of pennies every day. I also assume the store adopting such a policy would not be able to lawfully round any transaction up.
Why are you assuming that? I described back in post 128 the way rounding is done in Australia. Why wouldn’t the US system work the same way?
Because those of us who run stores are vicious capitalist bastards who would round up to the nearest nickel.
Having thought about this, I wouldn’t care what happens as long as I don’t have to carry so many damn coins in my pocket.
I’ve gone back to carrying three quarters, two dimes, a nickel and five pennies. I come home with less crap than I start out with. 
The problem is, while they don’t have to give out pennies, they have to accept them as they are legal tender (is my understanding). They would still have to deal with some number of them (granted, fewer).
No, the store does not have to accept pennies. See this FAQ from the Department of the Treasury:
What happened to “This not is legal tender for all debts, public and private”?
When you’re paying for your groceries, you’re not settling a debt.
Legal tender = potential. Individuals and businesses can refuse to accept $2 bills, but I can’t deny that they are valid currency, nor that they are worth two US dollars. Banks, however, cannot refuse to accept them.
ETA: Though they can make you roll up the pennies and otherwise make it difficult for you.
For this we lost the War of Northern Agression?
My WAG is that the store would lose only a couple of dollars per day going penniless. My other WAG is that the reduced headache would be worth it.
Maybe the store could have a policy saying there is a round down discount on all penniless cash transactions. If the customer needs to pay with one or more pennies, then no discount.
Got any pennies with that printed on them? 
And, also, what Dewey Finn and the FAQ said.
Isn’t that what E Pluribus Unum means? 