Why don't we use steel in our coins?

A prescription for abuse of the machines. Believe me you are going to have a lot of unhappy customers if your machine won't take their coins because they are the "wrong kind". And the venders really don't want to give up on a bunch of sales just because the machines won't take their coins, so they will need to have new mechanisms that can accept both types of coins. This means a new coin mechanism for every machine at a cost of $200 or more per machine. And if they don't make all the changes at the same time, you either have times when your machine won't accept customers money, or you may have to swap out the mechanism more than once.

 

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Indeed Conder, when the new larger head bills came out they were not universally accepted in change machines, grocery store checkouts etc. Was sort of annoying when you had one of the bills and had to wait for a store employee to get out of their personal discussion to come take your money.

 

During WWII the Italians made a stainless steel 2 Lire coin. I have a couple, dated 1940. The finish is very durable. It is weakly magnetic. I don't know how expensive it was to make.

 

This!!

 

Right.

I mean if a fella has a pocketful of nickels that he cannot spend in a vending machine then he'll take it out on the vending machine?

Right.

That argument is as weak as the "but they are so heavy" argument with regard to dollar coins!

Foreign Countries have "proven", beyond a doubt, how adaptable folks are with regard to changes in coin composition and the elimination of paper dollars YET our idiotic Congress and Legislators continue to pander to the lunacies of the various lobbyists that tarnish the integrity of our Constitution by supporting the needs of the rich without concern for the common citizenry of the country.

 

If you're going to advocate for an overhaul of the change system, the vending machine lobby will push for having bill/CC reader only machines. This will lead to yet another form of inflation.

 

I'm not entirely sure anything has been proven by foreign nations with respect to the American habits of coin and bill usage.

 

The point is that such things - modification of the sizes, alloys, etc. - have been done outside the US numerous times. That includes various countries where vending (and similar) machines are used a lot. So this is not anything where people could say, hmm, nobody has ever tried this. They may of course say that whatever is done outside the US has nothing to do with how things are done in the US, so why care.

Christian