I wouldn’t be able to put my rolled coins under the drawer–there’s no room. But I can and do put them in the fifth bill slot.
I use the fifth change slot for dollar coins–I do see them every couple of days–and pennies, which I only get when someone’s scraping out their change jar for the price of a snack that day. It’s a school cafeteria, we only sell a limited number of items, and every total ends in either zero or five, so I just don’t have a real use for pennies, and no one wants them in change. The first change spot I use for paperclips.
This matches my experience. I’ve tried to give them in change, only to be told that the customer wants “a real dollar.” The customers who have them likely got them from the metro station.
All I can say is that, unless you were a little kid, it was no big deal 50 years ago to lose a quarter, which was worth about five of today’s dollars. And the British seem to be doing OK with their £2 coin, which is worth nearly $4, as do most other Europeans with the €2, which is worth more than $3.
The plain fact is that we’ve had a (roughly) 2000% inflation since the days when the present US coinage system was nailed down (essentially, in 1857), and it’s ridiculous to pretend we haven’t.
The equivalent number of quarters would be 700, which I strongly suspect would be heavier than 175 dollar coins. We’re still talking about $175, right? The equivalences work out like this :
Paper money (175) – rather light.
Dollar coins (175) – heavier.
Quarters (700) – heavier still.
Granted, I haven’t weighed 4 quarters vs. 1 dollar coin. They may be lighter. I doubt it, but maybe. Hence my question.
At least one of the Casinos in Las Vegas uses 50c pieces; as the Blackjack odds are 3:2 and the minimum bet was $5, if you got a Blackjack you’d win $7.50 (being a $5 chip, 2x$1 chips, and a 50c piece). They all seemed to be from the early-mid 70s and have Kennedy on the back, FWIW.
I explained myself poorly. I meant 175 quarters - an amount I have indeed handled from time to time, so I have a feel for how heavy they’d be. My assumption was that 175 dollar-coins would be similar, a bit heavier, but I’ve never had that many dollar coins on hand.
Right - in three years of being the “Cookie Mom” - and handling several thousand dollars in cash every year - I’ve never seen a dollar coin in the cookie money.
Aside from the nuisance value (rolling away, weight), they’d be nice - dollar bills get wrinkled, torn, and just plain dirty.
The ultimate reason to not do dollar coins however, is that they don’t have unique serial numbers and therefor could not be used here!
The great advantage in this situation is that counting them is so easy - stack up one set of five or ten, and all you need to do is make more towers to match. Try that with bills.
Nevertheless, thirty two hours after the matter is settled, you have to stick your nose in. Give it a rest. The world will continue to spin whether or not you decide to pontificate.
It seems to me that if you have a dollar coin, you almost must have a two dollar coin (like both Canada and euro). Some people (read: me) do not like carrrying a lot of change. With a $1 and $2 coins, any change would be at most two dollar coins, plus the “silver”. As for the change drawers, it would seem easy to me to bifurcate the no longer needed one dollar bill drawer and use it to hold both the one dollar and two dollar coins.
The U.S. has never “demonetarized” (declared a lawfully-issued piece of currency to be no good anymore) anything, IIRC, and probably never will. But if the Treasury just stopped printing paper dollars, or routinely issued both to banks as angry hangry suggests, dollar coins could be struck to meet demand. They wear out much more slowly than paper bills and would be very cost-effective. Over time, they’d drive out paper dollar bills from circulation. The adjustment wouldn’t be that big a deal for people, but as long as paper dollar bills are in widespread use, inertia will prevail. When I was in London in late 1985, I used one-pound coins all the time, and it was very convenient.
The Kennedy half-dollar is, IMHO, the best-looking U.S. coin now in circulation, and I’d love to see them get more use.
I don’t see any compelling reason for demonetarization. Any currency should continue to be good. However, it can be very effective if --as of a date certain --any bank in the federal reserve system would supply only dollar coins, that would speed the transition process. The transition process would be even more rapid if businesses were required to accept either dollar coins or notes, but could only make change with the coins, retiring the notes. (the latter would need exceptions for small businesses, most likely)
As long as dollar bills are put into circulation, dollar coins will be ignored (or hoarded as collector items) by the users: the people of the United States.
Canada’s result with the dollar coin shows us the best evidence that to make dollar coins something people will use, we have to remove paper dollars.
I think you have misplaced a decimal point somewhere. Both this site and this site indicate that a 1958 dollar was worth about $7 in 2008 dollars. You have to go back to about 1910 to have 25 cents be worth $5.
Not for nothin’ but the Mint still makes half dollars, they’re just not as popular, and the only time I ever see them is when I buy them from the Mint.
There are a lot of different scales, depending on what you compare. Both the price of gold and the price of a new comic book agree that a 1958 dollar was worth nearly $30 in today’s money, half again what I estimated.
And, as I say, when considering US coinage reform, you really have to go all the way back to 1857.
