Flutterby™! : Dollar coin production stopped 2002-04-09 21:41:35+00

Dollar coin production stopped

2002-04-09 21:41:35+00 by Dan Lyke 13 comments

U.S. Mint ceases production of dollar coin. Duh. Do we really have to go to Washington and use the railgun of clue implantation? The only thing they did differently from the Susan B. Anthony dollar was make the edges unridged. I've probably spent less of these as quarters than I did the Susie B.s, but they made my wallet bulky, they still required visual ID to tell from quarters, and they were named after a traitor who sold out her people. Of course they didn't catch on. Sheesh.

Yep. They came as change from Post Office vending machines. I'm told they also gave 'em out as change at WalMart, which lead to some interesting speculation about intersecting economies when nobody I knew had seen any. But I just went back to the article. 1.3 billion minted. That's 4.8 per person in the US. Okay, yet another reason they didn't catch on.

at least we've got them, for when inflation takes off again and a dollar worth what a quarter is now.

Except for the people they put on them.. I like the idea, and loved it when I got them and spent them.

The rest of the country may treat them as quaint artifacts, but here in BosWash they were/are a fact of life at the toll machines. You used to be able to get a hatful of Susan B's at the Turnpike or the Metro, more recently Sacajawea was your change buddy. It seems to us that they mint enough to feed these transit systems and then stop. We'll be seeing them for quite some time. :)

The main reason the Sacajawea dollar failed is that dollar bills are still easier to use. The problem with small bills is that they circulate so fast that they wear out in a few months and have to be replaced. In many other countries they were able to finesse the problem by ceasing production not of the coins but of the bills. Canada replaced their single with the one-dollar "Loonie", and eventually moved up to the two-dollar "Twonie" (sp?. Australia also abolished 1 and 2 dollar bills in favor of coins. I believe that the UK did the same thing with the pound note. The US Treasury has been afraid to grasp the nettle, put up with the howls of merchants and just do it! I also believe they would need an act of Congress to pull it off.

Should the stop printing a paper dollar, mint the dollar coins with a more respectable icon, and stop making pennies? I like this idea.

Having spent some time in China a while back, I was suprised to find the smaller paper denominations were - smaller! The paper money came in different sizes, larger for higher value. Great for blind people but what kind of wallet do they need?

I'd like it better if they'd stop putting politically correct images and get back to presidents - except the the con man, clinton, of course.

And while we are on the subject, they have turned the presence of large anounts of cash in your pocket form a virtue to a cause for suspicion, and confiscation.

I hate coins and work to carry as few of them as possible. I would not be happy if dollar bills were eliminated. Can you imagine what a pain it would be trying to plan your shopping trips in units of $5?

Of course I also carry lots of cash in my pocket - too many bad experiences with debit cards - so I'm sure my opinion is irrelevant.

Subsidiary suggestion: abolish the dollar bill, revive the Sacajawea (or whomever)and also revive the "Deuce", the two dollar bill with Jefferson on the face. The wear factor on the deuce would be less than on the single. As to abolishing the penny, I've heard the arguments about merchants just rounding off bills, but does anybody think they would round down? It seems to me it would be a 1.0% to 4.0% windfall for them. Not a lot, but with an outfit like Wal-Mart it would be worth billions!

I just came back from Canada and I really had more problems than I expected with the loonie. (It's a stupid name, but as our Frommer's points out, the fastest way to look like a tourist in Canada is to say "dollar coin.")

It's not just that I like as little heavy change in my pocket as possible. It's that I'm brought up not to count my "change" when I count money. So I look in my pocket in Canada, see that I have a couple of five-dollar bills, and think, "Gee, I don't have enough to buy this (just over ten-dollar) item," forgetting that there are two or three bucks in dollar coins lying at the bottom of the pocket. Coins are supposed to be insignificant, darn it!

The toonie is a really cool-looking coin, though - very large and made from two different metals (alloys) - a silver-colored doughnut with a gold-colored center. Also, Canada has color-coded bills - each denomination is a different color. I found I REALLY liked that, more than I expected to.

I heard that a big problem with the Sacajawea dollar (which I liked, and which I had NO trouble telling from a quarter when feeling blindly in my pocket) was that people hoarded them - not enough of them were in active circulation long enough to make the coin useful.

At least for me, the 'not counting change' and 'hoarding' problems were the same. Whenever I got any of the dollar coins, they went straight to the change jar, where I promptly forgot about them. This was partially intentional, because now when I don't think I have any money, I still have at least $20 in golden dollars.