Sampiro, can I add Fredrick Douglass to your list of potential nominees for someone on a US Toonie?
Silenus, one of the advantages to coins is that they have a circulation life on the order of twenty-five years, where bills are assumed to last only two years, so the amortized costs of coinage vs. paper money is much less over the expected lifetime of the currency, even if the coins cost ten times as much to manufacture.
Oh, I know all of the “advantages” of dollar coins. I just don’t like them. Fewer but heavier coins is not a plus. Besides, if we switched over to plastics for our “paper” money, we could get a much longer useful lifespan out of them, in addition to all the neat colors and anti-counterfeiting geegaws.
My understanding is that, at this point, none of the alternative fabrics suggested have matched the A.R. Crane product for durability. Do you have a cite for plastic ‘paper’ bills passing the Mint’s testing regieme?
I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening?
Plastics. 
Well, the Aussies seem to think plastics are durable enough. They’ve been using them for better than 10 years now.
Durable enough isn’t the standard, though - the product from Crane really is phenomenal.
The site you provided shows that they’re using polymer bills, what it doesn’t answer is whether the polymers are any more durable than the current US bills.
It may well be. But it may not be, too.
For example, this Wikipedia article on banknotes mentions that some of the countries that have tried polymer notes, specifically Thailand, has gone back to more traditional paper, because of image durability and crease issues from testing in circulation.
Yes, there are some issues. But the same cite shows that Australia has been issuing and using polymers since 1988. No notes about problems or a desire to return to paper. Thailand may also have some specific problems that wouldn’t generally apply here. In any case, it looks like polymers are a viable alternative. Just because Crane has been supplying out “paper” for decades doesn’t mean we can’t look into newer materials.
And think of the colors!
No argument there - I’d just want to be assured that it is actually an improvement, rather than simply being new.
Also, remeber whom we’re talking about. Even Dopers have complained about the changes in the color scheme of our current currency. And others have argued against the seemingly obvious decision to simply eliminate the penny, here in this thread. Just how ready do you think the majority of our countrymen and women might be to embrace such a radical change in our currency?
That’s because we keep futzing around with half-measures. Wolfman had a point. All the new shadings do is make the $10 look like you’ve been eating Cheetos. Let’s get some vibrant colors in there! I want the $5 to scream “Green!,” like Chicago hotdog relish.
Search injun.
<Snerk>
Pennies have been a ridiculous thing to hold onto since the phrase “nickel and dime” (as a synonym for “of inconsequential value”) entered popular currency.
The vending machine lobby is the only thing keeping the dollar coins alive. I wish they’d give it up. I hate dealing with coins. I toss them all into a cup on my bookshelf at the end of the day, and periodically I take the cup down to the grocery store and dump its contents into the CoinStar machine.
I sometimes wonder if the Mint is actually trying to make the dollar coins fail. The Sackies start to look like cheap arcade tokens after the gold coating wear off, and the portraits on the presidential series coins are horrible! It’s like the guys at the Mint are just trying to use up their design budget or something.
One thing they need to do is come up with a “gold” alloy that stays “golden”. I’m all for the coins but they do look ugly after they tarnish. And considering how little they do circulate and the dull tarnished ones I’ve seen, they must tarnish extremely quicly.
Once they figure out a good alloy, then I think they should also make $2 and half-dollars of the same alloy, sized in proportion.
Okay, if it cost more to make the pennies and nickels, doesn’t the Mint make up the difference on the savings for dimes and quarters? What’s the net effect?
I will also share that my kids got Eisenhower dollar coins from the tooth fairy. My dad gave me a whole bunch of them, and that’s what they got, the big honking dollar coin for their teeth.
Ivylass, I’m not 100% certain I understand your point. I think what you’re saying is that since the Mint makes money, as long as it makes more currency (Yes, I know the Treasury uses the term currency to mean paper money, but I’m using here as a more general term - any exchangeble medium.) than it has to spend to make that money it’s ahead of the game.
The problem I have with this is that it ignores that I believe that we’ve got unsecured currency. That is that in the US our currency is specifically not linked to any actual exact value. Which then means that making too much currency can be bad, as an inflationary factor. So, simply making different denomenations of money to make up for the manufacturing costs of one denomenation seems to be a potentially dangerous practice to begin.
I’ll admit I could be wrong here - certainly AIUI, because of the effect of so-called virtual money, there’s only enough currency to represent a small fraction of the total amount of money in circulation through all venues. (I think it’s one fifth to one quarter of the total amount is actually represented by currency, but I’m far from certain of that fraction.)
Having said all that, I’ll admit I’m not really convinced it’s valid to compare/contrast the validity of a denomenation of currency based on the total costs of manufacturing all currency, vs. the value of all currency created.
I’d consider the value of a denomenation of currency to be judged by several denomenation specific factors.
First, of course, is the cost to create the denomenation of currency, compared to the value of the currency.
As a subset of that first consideration would also have to be amortized costs - i.e. what is the expected life-time of that specific piece of currency. Which is one of the things that makes coins so attractive to some people - they last so long compared to paper currency.
Second, and this is very hard to gauge, what’s the value to the economy, as a whole, of the specific piece of currency. This is where things like the “granularity” of money that people had been talking about upthread comes into play. And arguements about whether or not the fractional value of being able to break prices down into one hundredths of a dollar is worth the economic cost to the consumers and businesses to actually handle pennies.
Finally, and this is what I consider to be the invisible elephant in the room, is how to deal with the proven conservatism of the public, in general, when dealing with money.
I tend to believe that Americans, as a nation, are more conservative about the appearance of money, and the system we have, now, than most other “first world” citizens. The reasons for this are hard to determine, but I think some of them could be: [ul][li]Americans haven’t had a signifigant change in common currency since 1965 IMNSHO, when silver coinage was replaces with nickel-clad copper sandwiches. (Or 1982, with the penny going to zinc with a sheath of copper, instead of all copper. I think, however, that the penny change, simply because the copper sheath is all around the coin, instead of leaving the visible copper band in the rim like one sees on the dime and quarter, means that most people aren’t really aware that there had been a change in the composition of the coin.)[/li][li]American paper currency had been unique both for it’s status as an international medium of trade, and for it’s color, for so long that many people had no memory of US paper currency being any other color. [/li][li]Finally, I think that many other “first world” nations have had to go through currency rationalizations during living memory of many people - so they were far more acclimated to the idea that money can change. The UK is the first example that comes to my mind, but I don’t think it’s the only one. [/li][/ul]
Getting back to the specific issue of pennies and nickels, when Congress has to pass laws to protect our currency from being melted down for the metal value of the physical exchange medium, it seems to me that’s a sign that we have to seriously consider phasing out those media, or re-imaging them to reduce the real value of the metal contained within the media. If, as had been happening, our currency is being scrapped for the value of the metal in the currency among other things it serves to really, really, really screw up the cost/benefit analysis of manufacturing the coins in the first place. A coin that’s expected to last 25 years in circulation could be reasonably manufactured, even if it’s done at net loss - because the value of the coin as an exchange medium during that lifetime will offset the costs. But if the life of the currency is dropping, as a guess, to two years, because of the number of poeple scrapping the coins it’s no longer a reasonable expenditure.