RIP...US Mint

Why? Would the CC (AC) kill me?

 

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If anything ever happens with US money (apart from going electronic), I see Congress moving to polymer notes before switching to minting more coins. Perhaps even for the $1 bill. They cost more up front, but they last quite a bit longer than today's bills. It would also be a safer political move. All one has to do is read the excellent "A Guide Book of Modern U.S. Dollar Coins" in the Bowers series to realize just how much the dollar coin experiments of the past 40 years failed. From Ike to Presidential, they all failed rather miserably as circulating money. And yes, dollar bills did still circulate, but these coins were hated beyond that. No one wanted them. People refused them in change. People refused them at banks. People plain just didn't want them. People would probably hate them even more passionately if they were forced to use them. Though I don't know the future, I have a hard time believing that the mint has the stomach for more dollar coin disasters. I wonder if 2011 will remain the end of the line for circulating dollar coins?

 

If there was no $1 paper bill being produced, within a year as supplies of paper $1 bills began to dry, you'd see people getting used to the coin out of necessity, and eventually they'd forget a paper $1 bill even existed.

 

I still collect proof, silver proof, & uncirculated sets. I asio get extra sets to crack open for my dansco albums. P.S. Does anybody Know where I can get rolls of the 2017P penny. Out here in Cali we only get D mint coins at the banks. I called the US mint they refered me to federal reserve board, and said they only sell to banks. checked online to no avail even my last source Littleton coin didn't have them

 

Is that a chance you are willing to take?

 

Maybe, no one really knows, but I think such a situation would instead drive a move to electronic means of money rather than more coins.

 

True...but if we go to higher denominated coins (e.g. $5, $20, $50, $100), we may need a change in size/composition...which may affect the size of the dollar coin. You can't have people walking around with manhole covers in their pockets.

Perhaps the $50 and $100 coins could be rectangular like some European coins.

 

What happens in time of war or social strife...when the power goes out?

 

If the power is out having cash or metal wouldn't matter. There wouldn't be anything to buy anyway

 

Lol...tell that to the ladies at the corner of Hollywood & Vine.

 

In any event, the current cotton/linen composition of today's "paper" notes is unsustainable...given the bio-hazard it presents:

http://www.coinworld.com/news/paper...-be-disgustingly-filthy-studies-show.all.html

 

It's fine. Your cell phone is far dirtier so are many other things.

 

Germs are everywhere. As said above, you're more likely to get contaminated from the cell phone you put in your face multiple times a day than the dollar bills in your wallet - unless you eat them or rub your face on them. The same argument could be made for the health hazard about coins also. I wouldn't put a coin in my mouth any more than I would put a bill in my mouth. I also wash my hands after handling large wads of circulated change. Who knows where that stuff has been? I don't really want to know...

The US will probably go polymer at some point anyway, similar to many other countries. The polymer notes in Canada even have people wondering whether they need to drop the $5 bill for a $5 coin. I guess we'll see... money changes very slowly in this country.

 

The manhole covers is why I believe the half dollar and dollar coins failed.
During a time when 50 cents was actually an amount of money that could, buy a meal, take a cab, go to the movies, etc, they were used and carried around.
When their value became less and less, and vending machines, parking meters, phone booths did not accept them, what was the point? No one needed them and used them. Likewise with the giant Ike dollars, there was no reason to carry them around when you could much more easily carry a dollar bill.
So they made the coin smaller. Susan B Anthony flopped. And this was after reconfiguring vending machines, and toll booths to accept them. When you put a $5 bill into a bill changer by the vending machines, instead of getting 20 quarters (which is what you wanted) you were stuck with 4 SBA's and 4 quarters. I guess to spur you to stick those dollar coins back into the vending machines. Sacagawea dollar, colossal failure. What is the point of a dollar coin if no one used the SBA's?
Then the president dollar coins. All 3 of these have the same size and weight. And at first, because of the interest in the state quarter/ territories and parks program there was some interest at first in the president series, but mostly as a collectible. No one is going to use a dollar coin (if they are not forced to) when a dollar bill is so much easier. And again, another massive failure. The mint is wasting time and money minting pennies, halves and dollar coins. They have lost the seigniorage from minting them because no one wants them and they have to pay to keep them stacked up in warehouses. Coins should not be produced just for collectors. They should be a circulating currency.
Here are some dollar coins and halves I have found detecting in less than a year.
Who even has these to carry around and spend? There's 3 more missing from the photo. Sorry for the long post, I know, no one reads long posts. Pennies will not disappear quickly once they stop minting them. That is a fallacy. Every house in America has a jar of 300 pennies. 100 million households and that's 30 billion pennies that are just going to disappear. OK, whatever.

 

Excellent post! I agree 100%

Nearly every place I do business don't carry pennies, anymore. They just round the amount down in favor of the customer. It's far cheaper than handling pennies and customers prefer it.

 

Literally every place I shop at accepts and gives in change cents, nickels, etc.

 

Give it time. Places where I use cash most often...NASA cafeteria and American Legion Post 60...don't deal with pennies. Other stores have penny cups and the cashier takes/adds pennies to the cup for me. It's just a matter of time before people realize what a waste of time and money that is.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/04/news/economy/end-of-penny/index.html?iid=EL

http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/11/news/economy/u-s-coins/

 

This squares with a larger proportion of my experience every month.

 

Manholes?!?!? You CAN'T be SERIOUS!



Look, one or the other of the two following HAS TO BE wrong.

Either the SBA failed because its size was too close to a quarter's, or Sacs, Prez's and SBA's are manhole covers. Both can't be true.

All small dollars CAN BE extremely vending machine friendly. For various reasons, MANY vending machines in eastern PA use them both as tender on the way in to a transaction, and as change on the way out.

Any vending machine that can't handle small (27mm) dollar coins is a CHOICE made by the manufacturer, nothing more.

BTW, a lot of work went into making the Sac/Prez dollar coins and the SBA have an identical weight and electronic signature.

 

Not with mine. Does scientifically gathered/presented/vetted data supporting such anecdotal assertions exist? Cite if you know of it, please.