Just wondering: how long are these coins designed to last? i have a few in my pocket from the 1970’s-they look pretty good. Does the government withdraw them after they reach a certain age? That would seem to be a very difficult thing to do-or do old pennies just get lost or snapped up by collectors. incidentally, i used to see a fair number of the WWII steel pennies around-are significant numbers of them still in circulation? haven’t see anything older than about 1950-is that about the life of the coin?
Of which government are we speaking? The US doesn’t withdraw pennies from circulation. (Coin collectors do).
Hmm, I misread your OP as “I have a few in my pocket from the 1790s”, I was about to post that I had never received a 1790s-era cent in circulation let alone ever had “a few in my pocket” 
US Cents minted in 1909 or 1913 I still find occasionally, but as I said the coin collectors tend to nab them. The wheat ears on the reverse give them away as “old” and amateurs with no more than a vague idea of what’s valuable and what’s not will often remove them from circulation, and the wheat ears were replaced with the Lincoln memorial in 1959.
In general, coins start to disappear from circulation when they’re visually different from the newer versions; thus, you’ll see Lincoln memorial pennies from 1959 to the present in circulation but seldom the wheat-ears ones issued from 1909 to 1958. Similarly, I’ve seen the occasional Jefferson nickel from as far back as 1939, but I’ve never seen a buffalo nickel in circulation. (Thus far, I get the sense that collectors are more likely to pull the brand-new nickels from circulation than the old ones, since there are multiple designs to collect and they are all shiny and exciting, but I suppose the Jefferson-memorial design will eventually start to disappear.)
I read the title as “When are U.S. Penises Withdrawn from Circulation”… is that a roll of pennies in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Coins are only withdrawn from circulation by the banks/govt when they fail to go through the automatic coin sorting machines due to being bent or otherwise damaged. The others are removed by coin collectors or eventually end up in big jars that only get emptied when the person who owns them is moving.
-dave-
A year or two ago, I found two buffalo nickels in my change when I stopped at 7-11 for a hot dog I wonder if some kid spent his dad’s coin collection or something. I mean, the odds of getting, not one, but two fairly rare coins in the same transaction would have to be extremely small otherwise.
For a couple years, as a janitor, I decided it would be amusing to adopt the superstition of not picking up pennies or nickels that were tails-up. When I had the break areas job, I swept quite a lot of change from under the vending machines.
Later on, there was a locker-room customer who left a penny in the same place every day. I guessed he was trying to find out if I swept every day. I started breaking his pennies in half, and leaving him a half. The zinkies are surprisingly brittle.
I recall that silver coins disappeared very quickly, once the new nickel-copper sandwich coins came out. When did 50 cent pieces disappear? And those bizarre Susan B anthony dollar coins-have they disappeared as well?
When you get a roll of Sackies you are likely to find several SBA dollars in there as well. There are lots in circulation, they just don’t circulate very much.
When I worked at a 24/7 convenience/deli/liquor store, we’d frequently get someone desperate for cigarettes or booze, and they obviously were using their “odd money” collection…two dollar bills, dollar coins (not just SBAs, but Ike dollars as well), silver coins, etc. I’d usually buy these coins out of the drawer, if I could. So in my case, it usually wasn’t the kids, but the adults using these coins.
They must dump them into a big hole in the basement of the Mint, because you never, ever, see half-dollars in circulation.
As for dollar coins, I only see them when I buy stamps from a post office vending machine. Susie B’s are starting to become less common now; Sackies are definitely in the majority around here. Also, you might be interested in knowing that they’re going to start a series of dollar coins bearing the likenesses of all the US presidents in the order they served. Same idea as the State Quarters. I wonder if they’re going to stop making the Sackies.
You see them a lot in casinos.
Both the half dollar and the Sacagawea dollar coin were made for circulation up to about the year 2001. After this, the Mint realized that neither were ever going to circulate to any extent, and cut back on production, no longer making them for “circulation.” This means that they no longer produced 25-50 million halves, but produced about 4-5 million, NOT for circulation but sold only through the mint’s online and mail order sales, to collectors and dealers, mainly in bulk. The same is true for the Sac dollar. They have cut back to 5 million coins produced, sold online, and NOT issued for circulation.
We currently can NOT obtain the latest state quarter, North Dakota, through the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, as they are buried under a massive amount of quarters and don’t need any more, so the Mint won’t ship them the latest. Another brilliant idea from the USMint. Make more quarters than the public can digest. Idiots.
go to your local bank. Tell them to order you as many halves as you need. Tell them you want $2000. face value. They will order them, and they will show up within a week. They are sitting in the basement of your local Federal Reserve Bank. Who subcontracts with Brinks. Brinks will deliver them.
Are you sure they were actually steel? They were only made one single year–1943. Personally, I’ve never seen one in its natural habitat. I do have one that I bought at a flea market though.
Having worked at a 7-11, I concur. I once had a fellow who paid for a couple of packs of cigarettes with a bunch of silver dimes and a few other old coins. Silver dollars and silver certificates weren’t unheard of there either.
Speaking again from my experience as a cashier, the reason you don’t see halves and dollar coins is because cash drawers aren’t stocked with them, and cashiers aren’t in the habit of giving them out in change. Cash drawers (in the US, anyway) generally have bins for pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and “other”. The “other” bin is for the halves, dollar coins, and occasional foreign coin that finds its way into the drawer. We rarely made change from the other bin, unless we were low on change. Personally, I think it’s high time that we started circulating halves and dollar coins, but we aren’t gonna see dollar coins circulating until we quit minting singles. I don’t know if we’ll ever see half dollars circulating again, except in Vegas and in other gambling areas.
So why do they use half-dollars in Vegas? Is it more convenient for the slot machines? I’m not much of a gambler, so I have very little experience with casinos.
I’ve mostly seen them used at table games like blackjack and Pai-Gow. With the 3:2 payoff on blackjack, a lot of bets wind up paying something in change. A $5 bet pays $7.50, a $25 bet pays $37.50, and so on. Some casinos have $2.50 chips made and others just use half-dollars. Similarly, there’s a 5% commission on wins in Pai-Gow. A $5 bet wins $4.75, a $10 bet wins $9.50, and so on. So the dealer has a tray with quarters and half-dollars.
I once got a 1907 “V” nickel at a 7-11.