The new $1 coin.....

[poltr1]

Today the US Mint rolled out the first in a series of Presidential commemorative one-dollar coins.

I really hope the coin catches on this time. It hasn't in the past. The Eisenhower dollar coin was too big, and the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin looked and felt too much like a quarter. The Sacajawea dollar coin had a smooth edge and a gold tint to it, which made it look and feel different from a quarter. But they never caught on with the American public.

While they may be more expensive to produce than dollar bills, the coin has a longer usable life. Unfortunately, Americans are used to their dollar bills and are reluctant to switch or give them up. I'm afraid that's what it's going to take for Americans to start using the dollar coin.

When the Canadian "loonie" $1 coin was rolled out, the government of Canada stopped printing their $1 bills, thus forcing them to use the coin. And it is a nice coin. It has beveled edges on it so that I can reach in my pocket and know it's a loonie. They've since done the same with the "toonie" $2 coin.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

The problem with the Sacagawea dollar was that it was bug-for-bug compatible with the SBA dollar. Someone somewhere decreed it had to be the same diameter and weight so both dollars could be used in vending machines. So people were *still* confusing it with a quarter.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Anybody who couldn't tell a Sacagawea dollar from a quarter couldn't tell a quarter from a nickel. What I hear from billroper is that the Treasury has warehouses full of SBAs that they couldn't get rid of because almost everyone hated them, and they started trying to dump them on people that wanted Sacs -- so when you went to the bank to get a roll of Sacs you got a bunch of SBAs that you couldn't use as a customer without annoying yourself or the merchant and you couldn't use as a merchant without annoying your customers -- so whatever support there was for Sacs was crushed under renewed hatred of SBAs.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Hunh. That's an interesting story. Thanks. I do know that there was what seemed like a desperate attempt to force SBA dollars into circulation through the 80s and 90s by giving them as change in government operated vending machines such as those for stamps, commuter railroad tickets, and so on. I remember buying a $3.50-ish ticket on SEPTA (Philadelphia's transit agency) commuter rail from a ticket vending machine and getting SBAs as change.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I don't think the vending machines are a government plot -- I think it's the operators that want them. It's much easier to make a vending machine that accepts or gives change in dollar coins than in dollar bills. The simpler machines costs less, both initially and in maintenance costs. The vending machine industry was, I believe, the only sector of the economy that liked SBAs.

[zorya-thinks.livejournal.com]

The only way the US will be able to get a dollar coin to work is to do what England did back in the early '80's with the one pound coin - introduce the coin and phase out the paper dollar. Otherwise people will look at the coin and once the novelty wears off they will continue to use the paper money.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

This announcement yet again makes me want to wring the necks of the entire management of the Mint and the Treasury. Releasing four unique coins a year means they're going to be collector's items; billions of the darn things are going to get saved in people's jars, and unless they make enough of them to cover the entire country to a depth of 12 inches they will not circulate. Coins should be issued for utility, not for collectibility.

Fixing our coinage depends on three simple steps:

(1) Abolish the penny. Stop issuing them, direct the Treasury to start pulling them out of circulation and melting them, and pass a single national standard for cash pricing. (Either retail products should have prices that are a multiple of a nickel, including tax, or just round prices to the nearest nickel.) This creates a space in existing cash registers for dollar coins, so retail clerks don't snarl at customers who pay with them.

(2) Make plenty of dollar coins available, every single one of which is easily distinguished from a quarter by feel (un-milled edge) and color, and every one of which looks just like every other one so as to minimize the number of them that get stored in people's sock drawers.

(3) Stop printing dollar bills. We waste a great deal of money on keeping the economy supplied with dollar bills that only last a few months. People will complain. Issue earplugs to the people who have to listen to complaints and tell the complainers to See Figure 1. (Perhaps the Republican propaganda machine can be enlisted to explain to the country how abolishing dollar bills is critical to the War on Terror. It's not as dumb as the TSA rules.)

[billroper]

Actually, I think we'd be better served by issuing all new coinage and currency and dividing by 10, but that's a different argument altogether.

There's already a space in most cash registers for dollar coins -- it's the slot that used to hold half-dollars, but they're even less likely to show up than a dollar coin. However, the stores have gotten used to storing rolled coin in that slot.

The Mint makes money off of every dollar coin that they make, especially if they end up in a sock drawer, so they'd be happy to make enough to meet the demand, however many designs they use. This isn't the case with the penny or -- as I recall -- the nickel.

We can stop printing dollar bills if we also flood the system with $2 bills. Right now, the largest number of quarter-sized coins that I can get back in a transaction is three, which is reasonable. Without a circulating $1 or $2 bill, that count goes up to seven which -- in my opinion -- is too much change. And, of course, if you withdraw the $1 bill, you've got room in the registers for the $2 bill.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Actually, what I find assuming is that apparently professional strippers are against the dollar bills being taken out of circulation. With the Canadians no longer having a one or two dollar bill, if the American dollar bill is no longer printed, the smallest bill you can stuff in a dancer's garter is the Canadian five, and they won't get nearly as much money per dance! (And yes, I know, there's an American $2 in existence. How many do you have in your wallet?)
-- Dagonell

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, buskers *love* dollar coins; a lot more people will throw pocket change than will break out their wallets.

If it comes down to choosing whether buskers or strippers win, we know where public opinion would land.