Yep. Did that in Canada 10 years ago with the penny. Useless coin. At the time it cost the mint 1.6 cents to make each penny.
Again, we’re saving money. Did the public object? Of course they did, with the same illogical emotional arguments. We went ahead and abolished the penny anyway, and life went on much as before.
I’d classify them as “rare,” because they aren’t frequently used by most U.S. consumers in cash transactions, except by probably a small minority of people who like them, or just want to be different. (People who like to regularly use dollar coins are probably in the same camp.)
My understanding is that retailers don’t particularly like two-dollar bills, because, like dollar coins, many cash registers don’t have a drawer slot for them.
There may be over a billion of them in “circulation,” but I’d question how many of them are actively and regularly circulated, versus sitting in a drawer in someone’s house, or in a vault at a bank somewhere.
Do you have a cite for this?
There was talk about it 10 years ago.
Thanks.
That article notes that “it would take several years for the benefits of switching from paper bills to dollar coins to catch up with the cost of making the change.”
One question I have is whether our trend toward an increasingly cashless society would negate those long-term savings.
That’s correct. And in Canada, we’ve now had only the dollar coin for 30 years, so it was a pretty good investment to make the change.
And pennies.
As anecdotal evidence:
Or we could listen to the mathematicians who incontrovertibly prove that to minimise cost the Euro needs a 1 1/3 E coin, Canada an 83-cent coin, and the US an 18-cent coin. Needless to say, this can be refined using more up-to-date data, applied to paper/plastic bills as well, etc.
See also Optimal denominations for coins and currency - ScienceDirect where powers of 3 are supposedly good, so starting from $1 you would skip $2 and go right to $3; then maybe $10 is kind of close to 9, then we could go to $25.
I remember when things that cost a dollar (or more) used to cost a quarter, like the Sunday paper, so people managed just fine using coins for those types of purchases.
I blame the nonacceptance of the dollar coin on the incredibly lame public service TV spots that the Treasury tried - George Washington as pictured on the dollar bill telling us how “cool” the new coin was. They would have done better to show - in newsreel style and narration - how much it cost to gather and destroy dollar bills. (I recall reading that the average life of a dollar bill was about eighteen months.)
I don’t remember those.
Which new dollar coin were they promoting? (The U.S. has had several different versions.)
I’ve only received a $2 bill once in my life. I still have it. Got it in change when I bought my lunch while serving jury duty in a weird little courthouse north of McArthur Park. It had “End the Occupation” stamped on it, and I liked the sentiment, so I kept it.
It was back when they introduced the gold-colored Sacajawea coin, in 2000.
I have several 3 dollar bills in my collection. Of course they were all issued years before the government started issuing money.
Yep. Then think about Nickles.
Does not stand to reason at all. The Mint does not make currency, it makes coins. If anyone printed the it would be the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
In Hollywood, there was an early salad restaurant called “Two Dollar Bill’s” run by a really nice gay guy, and of course that was the joke.
But for a mere $2, you could get a filling and healthful salad.
Thank you for posting those. Just as i remembered them.
They’re in widespread use… in my neighborhood poker games.
For all those people out there who love them and hoard them in a sock drawer… you do know you can walk into any bank and get a handful, right? I think they’re going for about two bucks each.
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I used to give them to my kids, who of course put them right back into circulation. Kid #2, at a minuscule age, said
I love getting a two dollar bill. I try to find a clerk at a store who’s under twenty, and they’re not sure that it’s real.
(“Geez, kid, when I was your size, I was never that aware of people’s ages.”)
I don’t know about a $3 bill, but I have proof that there’s a million dollar bill.