Presidential Train Wreck

We aren't allowed to discuss former Presidents here.

 

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I cash a twenty in at the change machine about twice a week at work and recieve all sac or presidential dollars. I use them there at work and everywhere else I go. I have some on me probably 90% of the time so I'm doing my best to spread them! Not a single person I work with wants to lose the 1 dollar bill for the coin...... They don't like change in their pockets.

They need to get rid of the penny along with the dollar bill as well : )

 

That's great beacause I don't think he was! har har har...........

 

Bah, the source I found said 8 billion. I then promptly wrote 800. What little common sense I have should have caught that. Thanks for correcting that Numbers.

 

Yeah, I thought about that. Even if I got a few hundred of them, how many do you carry around with you at a time? What's the cut off for paying with them? They'd make nice tips I guess. I usually am looking to dump off change in my change bank immediately after I get home. I never like carrying change because as soon as you sit in a low chair or a car, it starts falling out of your pocket. If you start losing $1 coins that way, the thrill of having them will wear off in a hurry.

This is why they don't circulate. They have more going against them than for them. They're heavy in quantity, easy to lose, hard to obtain to begin with. Many people probably don't want to accept them. People don't want to have to explain what they are to the uneducated. They just want to buy their coffee and go.

I can't see carrying around more than $5 worth on a regular basis. Good for tips and maybe not much else.

 

All the points you mentioned are exactly why the $1 coins, at the moment, are good for collector purposes, and not much more.

 

Yet somehow Canada, the UK, and the Eurozone get by fine with equivalent currencies. It's because they actually went through with withdrawing the notes (or never having any in the first place for the Euro). People will whine for a bit, then suck it up and get used to it.

(Of course, there's the separate issue that the US Mint is terrible at designing dollar coins, from the SBAs that look like quarters to our current President designs that look like arcade tokens.)

 

LOL@ "arcade tokens"

I would like to see the dollar coin (and higher) be smaller, bi-metal coins like the Italian lira coins...easier to recognize and handle.

 

I used to collect the presidential dollars and sac dollars when I first got back into collecting a few years back, but then they seemed to just become a stain on an otherwise nice looking collection, if ya know what I mean. I just ended up spending them off. Well except for the George Washington dollar, still have a couple of those. I just don't like the designs. Especially putting the wording around the rim. Not cool at all.

 

Ditto...but what happens if inflation overtakes the value/practicality of the coin? I can envision a massive "melt" coming in the not-too-distant future. It'll be interesting to see how many (and which) coins survive.

 

It will never happen. It cost about 200 million dollars to create those two billion dollars. It will cost 2 billion dollars to melt them down and another 200 million to recoin them.

What I can't figure out is why they are coining so many of them when the Fed is not ordering them from the mint and the mint is under no obligation to make any specific number of coins. They have to make them each year by law, but nothing says they have to make 35 million of each date and mint. If they were to drop the mintage down to around 7 million of each date and mint they would actually be producing just about the same number as what the Fed manages to get rid of each year. At least that way the stockpile would stop growing.

 

I love spending them when I can get my hands on them. I think that if the dollar bill was discontinued people would get used to using them without much fuss. Where I'm from the average joe has a phone,pocket knife,wallet, skoal and coins all jammed into there pockets already so a daily ration of dollar coins wouldnt be noticed as a burden. Hey maybe those cool jakets with all the zipper pockets might come back in style.