UPDATE: What I heard from the Vending Industry

I admire your passion with this project, Drago but I sense some of it is not being able to see the big picture. You're so close to your ideas that you haven't stepped back to see the future. Sure, coins will be around for a while, but I think that soon the vending machine industry is going to stop taking coins or notes and covert to plastic or cell phone technology the same way the casinos (even here in Winnipeg) have done. Our machines take banknotes but the talk is that debit cards and cash cards (from the casino) will be the only things that can be used. It's far cheaper to change a chip than to convert mechanical components.

Good luck with your venture.

 

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Unlike the DoDo bird which is now extinct, the last of the big coins the "IKE" is still out there. Try hauling these bad boys around in your pockets and you'll see the advantage of cards.

 

People aren't gonna go back to using half dollars, no matter how much you want them to and no matter how much you pester vending machine companies and your Congressman, who I'm sure are only being polite to you if they answer at all.
$2 bills are only circulated by crackpot old geezers like me.
I get them from my bank and spend them but never got one back in change.
The $20 bill is the workhorse in day-to-day commerce, maybe because that's what ATMs pay off in.
But feel free to keep tilting at windmills...

 

Because they eliminated the notes. And it was accepted there. But we are not in Europe. You are comparing apples to oranges.

See my earlier post, where what you propose will, in my opinion, only add to the cost of those items dispensed from those machines. So from my perspective, you are simply trying to manipulate the soda and candy prices .

 

Cash isn't going anywhere at any time. All one has to do is look at the Mint records for any given year to see they are minting more coins every year and making larger profits every year. You think they're going to give up a multi-billion dollar industry over the scammers at the credit card company's expense? Thats a fantasy story nobody would buy.
Guy

 

Speaking of the half dollar...
I get rolls from the bank and look for silver from time to time (and believe me it's mighty slim pickings lately).
After checking, I return them to the bank.
If I'm fortunate enough to get some silver, I'll spend the remaining portion of the roll around town.
The merchants don't want them, nor are they happy when I spend $2 bills.
Trying to get the public to change long entrenched habits is, IMO, a exercise in futility.

 

Try picking up an Ike. Thats a hefty load, I must admit. Then pick up a half. That half, (and okay, I'll say two quarters) weighs next to nothing. I don't find halves, or ANY coin "heavy", except the large dollars that are no longer produced. I could carry $10 in halves (one roll) in my pants pocket, and not be bothered, and, who in the world is going to need to carry more than, maybe 4 or less halves at a time? Let alone 20 of them. That 4 or less halves would weigh next to nothing. And actually, the maximum amount of halves you would need to carry, is ONE. Of course, in every day usage, you will wind up with a few more in your pockets that you could just make a point of spending on your next purchase. Spend 2 halves instead of a $1 bill, or 4 halves instead of 2 $1 bills or a $2 bill. See how simple that is?

 

A dollar bill is lighter than 2 half dollars. So is a dollar coin for that matter.
I leave the house every morning with NO coins.
I use folding money for all my cash transactions.
At the end of the day I may have a few coins, which I will put in my piggy bank and later take them to the free coin star machine at my bank.
There really isn't any need to carry coins at all any more.
What really gets my goat is waiting on line to pay for something while somebody ahead fumbles thru their purse trying to find exact change.

 

This information is nearly a year out of date. In May 2011 the Treasury decided that a raised tactile feature will be implemented in the next currency redesign. Different-sized notes, notches, and cut corners are no longer being considered.

Notice that the wording of that statement, taken literally, does imply that the $2 note will receive a high-contrast numeral and a raised tactile feature. (Whether the person who wrote the statement even remembered that $2 bills exist is another question....)

 

Like Geezer, I leave for work in the morning with only paper in my pocket. At the end of the day any coins I have accumulated go in a gallon pickle jar. When the jar is full, I roll it, take it to the bank, deposit it, and use this as my "mad money". I keep a few quarters in the console of my truck for turnpike tolls on one of the bypasses. The vending machines at work both accept bills.

You keep talking about the weight of ONE coin verses ONE bill. Very few people (I'm sure there are some) only carry a buck or two with them. Let's look at a practical example. As I type this, I have $51.00 in my pocket. That's 2- $20 bills and 11- $1 bills. So which would I rather have in that pocket, the weight of 11 peices of paper or 11-22 (or more) metal coins. Weight aside, the SPACE the bills take up is far less than the coins.

 

I guess I don't match up to your standard of wealth but around here $5,000 or $10,000 is STILL a lot of money!

 

Where on that page, does it say anything about the $2 note getting a high contrast numeral and a raised tactile feature? And does the "high contrast numeral" mean a "large, dark" numeral like the new $5 note's huge purple numeral 5?

 

It does not specify ANY note for changes, but does exclude the one dollar bill from any curent change

Not sure how long that is in effect. The info is from May of last year.

 

Thats what I thought. But I thought maybe Numbers saw something I did not.

For every fiscal year, the small business and vending lobbyists try to block the redesign of the $1 bill (and for over a decade, have had success) by having Congress and lobbyists put wording in the Treasury Appropreations Bill, which always seems to pass, because they claim it would cost these businesses around $500 Million Dollars to reprogram every dollar bill reader that "can" be reprogrammed, while those that are too old to be reprogrammed, must just be scrapped. I don't see what the big deal is, though, seeing as the $5 bill was redesigned twice, and the vending and small business industry had no problems with those bills. Although I DID read somewhere that the vending industry was not happy with the second redesign of the $5 bill, and somewhere it was stated that, the current purple $5 bill would be the LAST redesign of the $5 bill, however, when I talked to the BEP, they said that they had never heard that the $5 bill would never be redesigned again, so I'm guessing that was just a rumor. It doesn't matter now if it was a rumor or not, because of the court ruling for the next currency redesign stating that ALL denominations, including the $5 bill (and hopefully, the $2 bill) except for the $1 bill, for the reasons stated above.

But because of the fact that language is always passed to prohibit the redesign of the $1 bill, I do wonder if there are some people in Congress or the Treasury that have interest in redesigning the $1 bill. But they have not redesigned the $2 bill yet, and there is NOTHING to my knowledge, blocking them from redesigning the $2 bill, so, why would they redesign the $1 bill, even if they were premitted to? Maybe because the $1 bill circulates a lot more than the $2 bill? (If so, still a stupid reason not to redesign the $2 bill, just as the reasons for not redesigning the $1 bill are stupid)

 

When will folks realize that the public doesn't really care what they get in change as long as it is spendable?

 

Exactly! This is why people would likely accept halves if they were handed out, and given as change by cashiers and machines. I know of one person who had said that he started using $2 bills AND halves, and his rejection rate for those two denominations was about 12% of his customers. (Yes, twelve percent)

 

I disagree. People simply do not want to use dollar coins, spendable or not.
The government has been trying to get people to use non-silver dollars for decades and has nothing to show for its efforts but a warehouse filled with a few billion coins.
At least they have enough sense to mint half dollars solely for the collector market.