I guess they aren’t popular because they aren’t plentiful in Iowa.
As a new coin comes out my Father in Law gives each Kid and Grand Kid new one.Thats the only time I’ve seen one.
I don’t frequent the Riverboat Casinos but I suppose they are a favorite there.
:eek: THEMS IS FOR WIMMINS!!!
As much as I hated the loonie and the toonie when they entered circulation, I’ve discovered a little side benefit of the filthy little things, and I hope that some of my American friends will soon discover this little joy.
A night out with friends, and when I wake up, the only paper sticking out my my wallet is one lonely, sad-looking five-dollar-bill. As it’s between paydays, I curse my spending habits, and mentally make a note to tighten my belt a little when it comes to spending for the next week.
On laundry day, I pull a handful of loose change out of my front pocket, and suddenly find my financial picture brightened to the tune of about fifty dollars, all in toonies and loonies. Yes, I know, I’m really no richer or poorer, as this doesn’t really count as found money, but psychologically at least, it feels pretty damn good.
i have them, i use them, i like them. i have a special coin holder that a friend gave me from china to hold them. sackies or baby backs, they are great.
Whenever I have to go to a teller at the bank (depositing a check or the like), I draw some cash in sackies–usually a roll or two–and spend them in the place of ones for the next couple of weeks. I don’t quite get the complaints about their weight/bulk/noise–do you people actually try to carry them in your wallet? I carry about 10 sackies (although 5 would probably be a more sensible number) in the watchpocket of my jeans all the time without any problems. I find it particularly convenient at drive-throughs, since it means I don’t have to dig my wallet out.
<shrugs>
I like sackies.
I love that the Mint put Sacajawea on the new $1; it gives me an opportunity to exercise my journeyman’s knowledge of the 1805 expedition for my knuckle-dragging friends here in the lawless West.
The way the Mint put them into circulation cracks me up, though; the started using them in the Post Office, sure, and selling them to banks, but most of them entered circulation via a big currency deal between the Mint and WAL-MART !
The other day I was in a taxi and it had a credit/debit card swiper mounted on the partition.
FTR I love the idea of a dollar coin. I think anyone who works or has worked in an industry where you count lots of money every night would love to see the end of the dollar bill and the penny.
You couldn’t be more wrong about me. I’ve been a bus boy. I’ve been a parking lot attendant. Both jobs end up accumulating a veritable ASSLOAD of ones. I can’t imagine getting paid at the end of the night by the waitresses with 40 sackies, or collecting $300 in the middle of a parking lot in coins, and then having to run down to the other end of the lot to yell at the asshole who parked in about 8 spaces simulataneously.
And another comment on this statement - where did you hear this? All the articles I’ve read on the subject says that vending machine makers are one of the principal opponents of new coins, because they don’t want to have to retool their machines.
Don’t personally know about that, but all of our vending machines at work take them, and the bill changers dispense them. I find them handy for food/drink purchases at work. I can change a $20 for them, and carry them in a belt/fanny pack type thing. Vending change for a few weeks.
[hijack]
Just for comparison, in the Philippines they have coin demoninations that go as low as the equivilent of 1/8 cent US (5 centimo) up to about $.13 (5 peso). Their bills start at 10 peso (about a quarter) and go up to 1000 ($25). It wasn’t unusual for me to be carrying aroung a couple of thousands and several hundreds at one time.
Wait, here’s something relevant. The cool thing about Filipino money, especially the bills, is that no two look anything alike. You can tell what denomination a bill is just by looking at the color. The five centimo coins are about half the diameter of a dime, and have a hole in the middle. Cool! Sakkies are at least more interesting than the same old boring black and green bills.
[/hijack]
Virtually every article I’ve read has said that the vending industry has been pushing for an accepted dollar coin since before the SBA was introduced, because dollar bills are less than ideal for vending machines due to optical recognition difficulties and counting difficulties.
On the flip side, all the research cited in these articles has indicated that the average person hesitates to put more than 2 coins into a vending machine, so having the ability to charge $1 with only one coin was a major sales advantage.
I don’t have any specific cites on this, but I’ll do some research and see what I can find.
Gah…I just managed to delete an entire page long post during preview. Let’s try that again.
From the US Mint:
http://www.usmint.gov/Mint_Programs/Golden_Dollar_coin/index.cfm?action=alloy
From the Conservative News Service (? Are they biased on this issue? I dunno. I’m a liberal though, so I’m not doing this on purpose.)
http://www.cnsnews.com/InDepth/archive/199905/IND19990511b.html
From the USAToday:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/mds024.htm
From ReplayMag, a video games industry journal, that suggests that the video game industry isn’t as prepared as the vending industry, but still is very much in favor of the dollar coin (difficult to pull out a good quote from this one. Here’s the best, but just read the whole article):
http://www.replaymag.com/rchil300.htm
From an SBA related site. Still based on dollar coins:
http://www.dollar-coin.nu/sba.html
Well, that should be enough. If you need more, I can find more. But that’s just a smattering of sources that I was able to find on a quick search.
And Cecil himself once weighed in: What happened to 50-cent pieces?
Love them sackies.
I buy a roll at the bank every week or so. Use 'em to make up differences in large amounts.
“That’s $27 you say… hmm, here’s a twenty, a five and <chink chink> two ones!”
Sad to say, those two usually go into the tray in the cash register that’s on the far end, with nothing else in it but paper clips.
<hijack>
A friend of mine works in a school where they have a printing shop. He’s taken a stack of BRAND NEW one dollar bills, had a cardboard easel cut to the same size as the dollars to back them, and runs a strip of that rubbery adhesive across the top of the whole shebang. That way, the ones peel off like notes from a notepad. As a kicker, he slips it inside a leather checkbook cover. I watched him “peel off” several singles to leave as a tip, and the bartender didn’t think they were real “ones”.
Hmm, maybe it’d work if the same way if sackies were packaged like a roll of mints!
<hijack ended>
When I was a theatre manager I would have to count thousands of singles in a night. Torn or worn singles don’t go through a bill counting machine with ease but a 5 or 20 can sneak in with your singles and screw up your count. Using a coin counter would be much easier. Plus handing a roll of singles to a chashier would be easier than a stack of 100 bills which he or she would have to count to make sure her bank was right.
Plus you could hit the asshole who didn’t park right with a sack full of sackies. That would teach 'em.
Munch, thank you for this unnoticed gem! Finally a practical problem to set our sights on solving!
Thanks, superdude. But I will point out that the use of two dollar bills at a strip club doesn’t cost you TOO much more, and they might mistake it for a twenty, which could get you some extra attention!
Sorry, pal, but I love 'em, and I’m delighted to see the mint go in this direction.
I’ve been seeing it more.
Paramount’s Great America is an amusement park in Santa Clara, California. When I was there last month, they were using these for change.
Two months ago I was in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. Flight was cancelled and spent some of the next five hours in their arcade. All games cost a dollar and the change machine converted $1-$20 into Sackies.
I’ve received them in change elsewhere.
I’ve spent them a few times (if I have them in my pocket). But at the end of the day all my accumulated change goes into a Costco-sized tootsie roll jar. Sackies just mean that jar will be more valuable when I cash it in.
Fiscally, I say the government should stop producing the $1 bill and force us into the coin currency. Emotionally I am completely indifferent.
At one point I was walking around the airport with $20 in Sackies in my pocket. The noise was not deafening and the weight was not a problem.