If someone owed me fifty dollars and paid me in dollar coins, I might be mildly annoyed, but probably only if I needed to spend that money immediately, in one place, like a grocery store. But it’s only fair to point out that I would be equally annoyed if I was paid in $1 bills, under similar circumstances. If I head to the grocery store and have to count out forty seven dollars in singles to pay for my merchandise, I don’t see how that’s better than the coins.
Anyone would rather get two twenties and a ten than fifty dollar coins, but so would the rather not get fifty dollar bills either. So the question isn’t whether dollar coins are better than dollar bills, but how annoyed we should get when someone pays us back in inconvenient denominations.
Well, the coins were a topic of conversation yesterday, and one of the people privy to the topic approached the dick guy and told him what we were discussing. Turns out the guy was ducking me because he didn’t have the money to pay me back, and he finally paid the debt with the coins, which he “collected”.
So he wasn’t being a dick intentionally.
I will not lend him money again, though I doubt if he would ever ask after this lil fiasco.
As far as dollar coins in general; I would use them if the dollar bill were eliminated. Otherwise, I will continue to avoid them.
ETA: This was my first experience ever with these coins. Initially I expected to see “novelty use only” stamped on them.
I’m British and I would much rather be given 50 £1 coins (or 25 £2 coins) than a single £50 note. Spending £50 notes is almost impossible as nowhere will take them for fear of counterfeits. But handing over 10 or even 20 pound coins at a time for a purchase is no problem - in fact most shops are glad of having the change.
People say Britain and America are divided by a common language; I think the real division is in their attitude to money. The British wouldn’t put up with having to stuff their wallets with wads of tatty, dirty paper each worth as little as a dollar is. Even the £5 note is looked on as a nuisance.
When I’ve visited America I’ve found it annoying to have to separate the $1 bills from the “proper” bills, otherwise I think I’ve got a decent wad of cash and find it actually consists of 12 dollar bills and a five, or something. In the UK, if you have a wad of notes that thick in your pocket you know you’ve got enough for a good night out
Please don’t do this. We hate large amounts of coin, even if it’s dollar coins. We like to have enough to make change fora dollar a cople of times, but that’s it. We can easily put lots of bills in our book thingies that we keep our cash, credit card slips, and paper for taking orders in. We don’t ever go to a cash register (except for the bartender.) All the money we get in a day has to be saved until the end of then ight when we cash out…and the manager will not let us cash out with any coins, ever. They have an armored truck service that takes all the cash to the bank, and as part of the service, they give the restaurant plenty of coins, so they don’t want any more.
Mayve a couple coins here and there for the novelty, but really, please don’t. I’m guessing often times the servers or bartenders don’t realize the US is minting dollar coins and thinks they are olderand worth more. I used to think that abouit half dollar and Susan B’s for a LONG time, until I started looknig at the dates and went :smack:
But to answer the OP, my friend has been collecting LOTS of dolalr coins (mostly Sackageweas (sp?) but some Presidential and Susan B’s too,) and is saving them for some Halloween, maybe this year, but it depends on how many he’sa saved up. His plan is to get a really nice Pirate outfit, put all the coins in a sack of some kind, and pay for all his drinks with “gold dubloons” and “pieces of eight” (that’s an odler name for certain silver coins, right?)
I use them in vending machines at work. We have a change machine that will give you dollar coins for 5, 10, and 20 dollar bills. They work much better than tattered dollar bills.
I had to spend some at a gas station for some small purchase, and the cashier was pretty excited…I think she put her own dollar bills in the till so she could keep them.
I think we should just get rid of the dollar bills, personally.
You say that now, but how would you fell when someone like Anton Chigurh gives you a final coin toss opportunity, and you say “I have no coins”, and then he just blows you away instead? Hmmm?
We should have a sticky about this, it comes up so often
But to pick my favourite anti-coin argument, the one about coins meaning that you have to walk around with a pocket bulging with shrapnel. Apparently this is noisy and uncomfortable, and what’s more it wears out your trouser pockets very quickly.
I have to wonder why there isn’t an epidemic of worn-out-pocketed, fatigued people driven mad by the constant jingle-jangle emanating from their trousers, in the countries where they do have higher-value coins? Maybe it’s because, you know, having higher value coins means you don’t have to carry so many of them? It’s not like the US, where 4.50 in coins is a serious amount of metal. Here, it’s like three coins.
I’ve seen how servers in Europe, and other places where they have high denomination coins, deal with this problem: They carry small leather(-ish) bags with a wide zipper closure at the top, into which they put everything they receive from the customers and out of which they make change as needed. That would work just as well here, but obviously it can’t be done, because it’s Different From How We’ve Always Done It Ever Since Our Ancestors Voted In The Coins We Have Now.
So let me see if I follow this–you get plenty of coins from the armored truck service, but if you don’t want them for yourself, their only possible use would be to pass them on to the customers in change. So they’re good enough for us, but not you? I think I’ll leave my next restaurant tip in quarters and nickels. Don’t worry, it’ll be a nice tip; I do try to tip well, but I really have too much loose change lying around and it’s such a bother taking it to the Coinstar.
I use them whenever possible. I often get them at the train station, and I often give 'em to pay for my lunch.
The US Mint is running a promotion where you can order $250 in dollar coins (up to some limit in $250 increments). You can pay by credit card, it’s not considered a cash advance. This is great for racking up points/miles/rewards, and it’s also good when taking advantage of interest-rate promotions (depending on the promo and your circumstances).
I got $2k in coins and used them to pay my property taxes. I was given quite a hard time, but when I explained to the lady that I did it because the only way to afford my taxes at the moment was to charge them… and that this was the best way to do it financially, she softened up a little.
But fuck 'em, I was paying in coins just because I could. Mind you, they were all rolled & boxed. It’s not like it was loose.
Yeah, eight quarters in my pants pocket would tend to wear it out quicker than two dollar coins would, and the quarters would be a lot more jingly jangly too.
Might be some of it. However, I’ve noticed tens are getting quite rare, so without dollar bills there’d be only two commonly used denominations, fives and twenties. One of the bill slots could be used for coins.
Another big reason for the coins’ failure is that armored truck companies didn’t want to change or add to their equipment to handle them, supposedly. I suspect it may have more to do with the fact that these companies profit by and thrive on the continuous one-way flow of shrapnel coins from bank to merchant to retail customer, necessitating a continuous demand for their services. If it were more convenient for the end customer to recirculate the coins by spending them, the merchants would be getting more of them through regular trade, and not need to order so many from the bank.
Yeah, deliberately go out of your way to inconvenience someone else because of what one person said on a message board. If everyone goes around giving their servers extra coins, and they’re that keep their money with them, they collect a lot of coins. Carrying a bunch of coins around with you is an inconvenience.
And that’s the whole point of this thread. While having a few dollar coins is fine, having a bunch is an inconvenience. And while using the coins isn’t bad, dumping a bunch of them is a bad idea. The OP couldn’t “just spend them”, because doing so would be inconveniencing someone else. His choices were to keep them somewhere at home, and take a few with him and try to use them up, figure out a way or take them to be exchanged for a more convenient form. He chose the latter.
That’s it. No need to get into a pissing match about whether coins or bills are better. No need to threadshit, acting like the thread is beneath you because you would never have a problem spending that many coins.
I was surprised to see that the automatic ticket booths for public transportation in San Francisco only take dollar coins. They even have change machines to change your dollar bills into coins. I even got a 1979 (or 1978?) Susan B. Anthony dollar as change in one of these booths in San Jose. I wish I’d kept it and brought it back home to show people, but I inadvertently spent it.
Last year, at Berlin Tegel airport, I tried to buy a bus ticket (at a counter inside the airport) with a 50 euro bill I’d just withdrawn from an ATM. The lady wouldn’t accept it; I had to use my credit card. Maybe I should have asked her using my (almost inexistant) German, but I figured I was still in the airport and I was tired from an overnight flight. I did use it later; most places I’ve been in Europe do accept those 50 euro bills as ATMs usually give them. I’ve rarely had trouble spending Canadian $100 bills.
It may be a regional thing. Cat Whisperer is posting from western Canada. There have been several counterfeiting operations here in the west over the past few years, and shops have been increasingly reluctant to take $100 bills. I’ve seen lots of signs at stores here in Saskatchewan that they won’t take $100 bills. Maybe they don’t have the same problem down East?
