Effectively, anyway. It appears that the U.S. Mint is cutting way, way back on production of the gold Sacagawea dollar, because “people just aren’t interested”. sigh. Much like the death of the Susan B., we’re in the third year of production for the Sackie. Is the Mint unwilling to make a commitment longer than that?
Can anything be done to save the noble Sackie, or is it a lost cause?
Get rid of the dollar bill.
How depressing. I love the dollar coin! Whenever I’m getting cash back at the bank, I get a roll. I frequently leave them as tips use them at tolls, convience stores, etc. I guess Americans just don’t like coins.
I think it’s odd that in a country where people really want to get rid of the penny, we decide to introduce a dollar coin. It’s a pretty coin, and it looks nice, but was there a need for it? Was there something that the dollar bill wasn’t accomplishing?
The usual argument is that, due to the short lifespan of the dollar bill, it would be more efficient to replace it with a coin. I agree, the US Treasury department needs to bite the bullet and get rid of the dollar bill.
The problem is that it, like the Susan B, is waaaaay too close in size and shape to the ubiquitous quarter. In the dark, especially, it’s way too easy to get them confused. The color helps, but IMO, not enough.
What toaster said. The few times I tried to use one, it was handed back to me by clerks who thought it was a quarter. The problem worsens when the coins get tarnished, which they do, badly. I have two Sackies that I got about a year ago and they are now dark brown. Since the whole publicity campaign centered around the golden-ness of the coin, it’s no wonder people have trouble identifying them.
Hallelujah! I hate dollar coins. With a passion. Why would I want to fill my pockets with heavy hunks of metal when I can just put a few thin, weightless pieces of paper in my wallet or moneyclip?
This is one of the government’s worst thought-out ideas, mainly for the reasons others have posted above. Why not make them entirely distinguishable from other coins? How hard is that? All you have to do is either drill a hole through them (1 for a $1, 5 for a $5, etc.), make them square, make them real thin, make the circumference a non-circle, etc. Too easy.
The usefulness of a widely-accepted dollar coin was apparent to me earlier this week, when the time came to do laundry. It would have been SO much easier to deal with just four Sackies in the laundry room than 16 quarters.
So now I’m torn. I used to get rolls of dollar coins and give them out as tips and such. I have about $40 in coins at the moment. They still won’t be collectible, since there are billions of them in existence, but then again, if I just spend them, someone else will hoard them like they hoarded all the others. So what do I do with them now?
Back in the day before I was born, dollar coins were bigger. Ever seen an Ike Eisenhower dollar coin? They were big. Maybe that’s why the Ike dollar lasted for 8 years, whereas its replacement, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, lasted two?
People think these Sacajawea coins are rare-but they’re really not. Maybe the Mint should have some sort of new campaign to that effect? I can imagine something with two pirates digging up buried treasure:
“Aaaargh. Look at all this golden booty! We’ll be rich!”
“Aye, that not be gold dubloons. It be the Golden Dollar from the United States Mint. It’s not real gold, but it be a treasure to use. They last longer than dollar bills, and be easier to carry too!”
“Good, I need something to pay me sailboat toll!”
Okay, you can tell I’m not really an ad exec, but you get the idea.
I still have never seen one in person.
I was just about to say that.
I just assumed they stopped making them long ago.
In three years, I’ve seen only one, which I got as change from a stamp machine at the post office.
I think another marginal reason for their failure (in addition to the non-pulling of dollar bills from circulation) is that they didn’t get buy-in from vending machine companies. Since dollar bills are notoriously difficult to get an electronic bill taker to accept, a dollar coin would be ideal for people who frequently use vending machines.
When I was in England, the pound coin was the most wonderful thing in the world to me. When I was out of folding money and nowhere near an ATM, finding six pounds in my pocket was a pleasant surprise. I’d love to have something like it here.
Go to the post office and buy stamps from the machine. Your change will be in Sackies (if it is over a dollar).
From someone in Oz who has been forced to use dollar and two dollar coins for years now, they are the worst pain in the pocket I have ever come across.
With notes, you can stack them in your wallet (although when your wallet gets toooooo fat, you feel like your the princess on the pea).
With coins, they weigh your pocket down and cause anything else in your pocket to get mashed.
Each night I probably dish out two or three dollar coins and they will sit in the coin tray until I need to bribe my kids to do something. The coins then go straight into the money box, so remain out of circulation until they go to the bank every couple o’ months.
I would rather have 10 notes that weigh significantly less than 10 coins.
Oh, and the rubbish about notes wearing out, trying using something other than paper. Down here in Oz we use a polymer and I haven’t seen a mute (mutilated note) in years.
Maybe it is because they get taken out of circulation before you see them torn up. In the US our bills aren’t made of 100% paper either. It is like some sort of fiber mixture, more durable than paper. Even so, the average dollar bill lasts for 18 months, while the average coin lasts for +20 years.
There was some “shock, horror” here reaction when the NZ govt changed the currency from notes to coins for the $1 and $2 denominations. The collectors went a bit spare getting the last near-pristine examples, and that was it.
There’s some talk afoot that our $5 note will become a coin too, but nothing more than talk, so far as I’m aware.
NZ economy being the way it is, the $1 and $2 coins are just that – coins like all the rest, they just buy a bit more, and fit into slot machines, photocopier coin slots and drinks machines better than a note/bill of the same value.
Pity about the “Sackie”. Guess I’ll be seeing them in the numismatiscist’s shops soon, huh?
Frankly, I love the feel of the British 1 pound coins. They’re thick and feel substancial and have engraving on the rims. But if there was still a 1 pound note available, I doubt they would have become the norm.
Get rid of the 1 dollar bill, make a coin that isn’t quarter sized and then we might have a chance.
Maybe, maybe not. The Treasury Department really went all out, doing everything except the one thing necessary to make the dollar coin work. As a result, there are hundreds of millions (IIRC) of Sackies in storage at US mints.
So, in a way, the coin isn’t totally dead. There are plenty to meet demand, should it surge in the next few years. Production is going to continue, although not at its previous rate.
eh, Can’t say as I’ll miss them. 4 different coin values works great for me. The problem is once people forget how to use them, you can’t get them to use them again, or at least not without great difficulty. That’s why we don’t find 50¢ pieces anymore. You used to find them in people’s chage. But then Kennedy died, they immediately put him on it and people began hoarding them. And the 50¢ coin disappeared from public and now you never see them.