Why has this coin never come into general use? I know that in the States you’re a bit ‘coin phobic’, but here in Canada, with the loonie and toonie (coming soon, the foonie?), we don’t have that excuse. I suppose most people would think that it repeats the function of the quarter, but then why have a dime? It’s just two nickels. Seems to me that if you used the 50 cent piece (and why no fancy name?) you would actually end up carrying around less coins. Slightly off topic I understand that until recently Australia had a two-cent piece. Was there a special name for that coin?
On the rare occasions we come across one here in the United States, we refer to is as a “half dollar” more often than “50-cent piece.”
I don’t know Canadian currency too well, but I think one of the reasons it never really caught on here is because it’s big. It’s almost exactly the same size as the two different dollar coins, which is also why it isn’t common.
It also falls into the same category as the dollar coin here: there’s not a spot for it in many change drawers and cash registers. Low IQ cash registers also aren’t programmed to give them back as change, either.
Coins have always been a bit odd. In the U.S. alone there used to be large cents, dismes, half dimes, two and three cent pieces, multiple attempts at a dollar coin, and so on. Stuff seems to be common because it’s used and it’s used because it’s common.
I am amused by the way Canadians give special names to their currency. In Australia, we don’t (as far as I know…). All I can remember is that we generally talked about the 1c and 2c coins as copper, because they were that colour.
Its also funny how some currency forms which are used very frequently in one country don’t catch on in another. In Australia, the $20 note is used VERY frequently. A couple of years ago, Japan introduced the 2000yen note (which is VERY roughly the equivalent) but it really hasn’t caught on, to my surprise.
Before we had decimal currency, we had a two PENCE piece which was generally referred to as “tuppence”, but none of our decimal coins have acquired any kind of nickname that I recall.
Occasionally, you’ll here people refer to our $20 note as a “redback” but that’s about it. Most shops don’t like $50 and $100 notes as they require too much change (ATMs here dispense $20 and $50 notes), which is why you’ll often see people carrying around large numbers of smaller notes in preference to the higher value ones.
It’s funny how things work here. IMO, the dollar coin makes perfect sense, being so widely used, as a coin it would far outlast the paper currency. But, it’s been my experience, every time I get one of those coin dollars, it ends up in my pocket amongst the quarters and dimes, and if I buy something for $6, I usually end up handing 'em 2 fives, 'cos I forget the $1 coin is in my pocket. But I never have understood why the .50 piece isn’t more prevalent, especially with the devaluation of the lower denomination coins. I mean, even the dime is pretty much outdated. We’re creatures of habit, I guess…the metric system makes a lot more sense too, but we still hold on to our inches…
I’m probably one of the older Dopers (early forties). I’m also one of the proud Canucks.
When I was a kid, in about grade one, I remember clearly being sent off to school weekly with a shiny fifty cent piece for my milk. I also used 'em for Brownie dues and got one Saturday’s for my allowence. As I recall, they started to fall into dis-use sometime in the Seventies. I still have one or two kicking around and I understand a few are minted every year. Last time I raided the coin collection, I was able to spend one, with a minimum of fuss.
Since we’re doing just fine with the Loonies and Toonies, beats me why we don’t use 'em!
In 1987, the dollar bill was replaced with a coin, golden in colour, alittle larger than a quarter (a Q just fits inside the ‘lip’ of the coin) with a loon on the front, hence ‘loonie’, which has caught on as the unofficial name of the currency. You’ll often hear financial analysts talking about ‘the state of the loonie’ against US currency. Although it started out with a tremendous amount of resistance, especially in Alberta (where people are contrary just because they can) it’s become tremendously popular, to the point that when they came out with the two dollar coin in 1996, it was welcomed almost universally. It’s made of a silver outer ring and a golden inner ring, is slightly larger again than a loonie and initally had a polar bear with cub on it. I’m told there’s a Swiss coin that this ring design copies. It now has a polar bear with two cubs and I leek forward to the further adventures of this bear family on future mintings. After great debate on what it should be called it became the toonie(the ‘dubloon’ was an early favourite but it lost out to either ‘twonie’ or ‘toonie’ depending on preference. Personally I thought they should have put two male deer on it and called it ‘two bucks’).
In the first couple weeks of its release, great sport was made of people popping the inner ring out of the coin, often by hurling it against a wall or other abuse. Initally this was a great embarassment but it was eventually pointed out that people don’t generally drop coins off buildings, put them in a freezer and fling them at concrete or put them in vice grips and hit them with hammers. Cooler heads prevailed.
I’ve seen the odd .50 piece in Canada, but I think only once in actual circulation. It’s in between the size of a loonie and toonie but is instantly distinguishable from them or quarters – it’s got the coat of arms of Canada on it and feels quite different to the touch. Aside from tradition, there doesn’t seem to me to be any real reason why it couldn’t be brought back into circulation. Like I said, it’s not that much bigger in size and would make the number of coins you carry around less - halving the number of quarters needed?
I really wish Australia would ditch its 5 cent coins. The only thing they are useful for is making change - you can’t even use them in payphones or vending machines these days.
Also, the US 50¢ piece is huge compared to ther US coins.
I haven’t figured it out. Excluding the silver containing halves, which of course won’t circulate due to hoarding, the US gov’t has minted billions of half dollars since the 70’s of which I’ve never received even one in change. I don’t know where they are – there are enough of those for 5 or 6 for each man, woman, and child in the country.
Are you sure that the US Mint is minting new half dollars? I doubt it, they haven’t made any new $2 bills in a while. But you can always go to a bank and get either of them and then spring them on unsuspecting clerks. I usually get a roll of Sackies when I go to the bank.
The US has minted halves for circulation every year with the exception of 1970 and 1987. Admittedly they don’t circulate, in general.
$2 notes are, indeed, still made. The most recent series was dated 1976, with a slight modification in 1995(which date appears on the latest issue. Are they common in change? No. But they are there for the asking.
The half dollar was in common use both in Canada and the US up until 1970 in the US and 1968 in Canada. These were the dates that coincided with the removal of silver from the coins. At that point, IMHO, people started to SAVE(hoard) these coins, and many others quit using them. I really can’t explain any other reason.
Cash drawers in the US still have a space for halves.
Warning! POM alert! reprise said
reprise I notice that you are posting from Sydney. But Australia didn’t have 2 pence coins before decimilization. What is the reference?
The outer ring of a “toonie” isn’t silver, but is silver colored. I am not aware of any Swiss coin that is bimetallic that was the model for a "toonie>
Cash drawers in the US still have a space for halves.
Well, my cash register space for other coins is generally filled with paper clips for dropping money into the safe and clipping other things together. Half-dollars, Sacas, silver dollars, all get dropped into the safe at the end of the night. I don’t even bother trying to give them as change.
It also falls into the same category as the dollar coin here: there’s not a spot for it in many change drawers and cash registers. Low IQ cash registers also aren’t programmed to give them back as change, either.
Well, remember, silver dollars can easily be confused with quarters. Sacas don’t have that problem, of course, but they’re not any more popular. I think the problem is that no vending machine in America–except for maybe the ones at the post office–are equipped to take the dollar coins and half-dollars and give them back as change.
There wasn’t a two penny coin that I know of in Australia. “Tuppence” simply refered to the amount, not the coins themselves.
The only surviving nickname for Australian currency (apart from the “redback” $20 bill already mentioned) is “two bob” for 20c (both the coin and the amount), which survives from the predecimal two shilling (florin) coin.
By the way, our 50c coin is dodecagonal (12-sided), so it looks a bit freaky if you’re not used to it. I find the idea of a “quarter” a bit odd, so I guess it depends what you’re used to.
I have been living in Canada for nearly 34 years and I never seen a 50c piece. (BTW, the official names of coins in Canada differ from the US: 10c, 25c, and 50c instead of dime, quarter dollar, half dollar, although the coins are similar.) When I came there were still some silver 10c and 25c, but they quickly disappeared. In the US, halves disappeared when just about everyone took the Kennedy coins out of circulation. But vending machines never took them, as far as I know. Someone said that vending machines never take or give dollar coins in the US (they certainly do in Canada). I don’t know about Saccys, but SEPTA machines (Philadelphia area transit) certainly took Susies and gave them too. You put a $20 into one at the airport for a $4 fare and you got a ticket and 16 Susies! Try spending them, on the other hand. The only way to get people to use them is to stop printing $1 bills. This is what they did in Canada and eventually $2 bills and now loonies and toonies circulate freely. In the US, there is a reluctance to stop printing dollars and so people don’t bother with the coins. You’d think vending machine makers would jump at the chance, but they don’t.
IMHO, not only are pennies useless, but so, to all intents, are nickels. Of course, you can’t get rid of them because you couldn’t make change for a quarter, but really, the nickel is worth less today than the penny when I was growing up. But at the very least, they should get rid of the penny and make room for a half.
Cecil Adams on Where have all the half-dollars gone?
I don’t think this is a fair assumption to make at all. Some countries (Canada, England, France, a lot of Europe) have seized on the fact that in general we still use a dollar bill instead of a coin as if it were some sort of “deficiency”. Well, I believe that all of those countries were quite happy to use bills for their “base” currency once, and they didn’t think it was dumb when they were doing it at the time. We could very well make fun of how long it took for deceimalization to occur in England too, if we wanted to go there (Shillings or farthings, anyone?) or we could very well say that Canada is “coin phobic” too, since they haven’t banned all paper money.
Saying the US is “a bit coin phobic” because we don’t fall right in step with the more “enlightened” countries out there is not fair. Coins are a base portion of our currency and are used at least as often in daily transactions as anything else.
While there are many good reasons to go to a dollar coin, and some good reasons why not to, given the fact that the economy is sucking so bad I think there are more important things for Americans to fret over. Personally, I think that electronic currency might end up replacing the paper and the coin currency before the dollar bill vs. dollar coin issue is decided.
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Saying the US is “a bit coin phobic” because we don’t fall right in step with the more “enlightened” countries out there is not fair.[/uqote]
I think there is some evidence that might fairly lead to the conclusion that the United States is coin phobic. Look at the uproar in 1979 over the Susan B. Anthony dollar. It was just a freaking coin and people were expressing outrage on national television. Since then, there has been a lot of political resistance to eliminating the dollar bill, mostly because such a change is viewed as being unpopular. Finally, now we supposedly have a new gold dollar. Where is it? I live in the vicinity of the nation’s capital and I haven’t seen but one of them in real life.