Bi-metallic US Dollar

Gotta find a way to weigh down that 'G-string'.........

 

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Yeah, like that will ever happen. Ha ha ha.

 

Dollar coins in the US won't catch on unless they eliminate the $1 bill. And if they do that, there's a good chance that they'll eliminate the $2 bill as well.

No room in the coin trays? Eliminate the penny. Problem solved.

But remember, we Americans are a stubborn bunch.

 

I don’t think the Americans are interested in another gimmick coin. Every dollar coin has failed since 1836. Even the early dollars, 1794 to 1803, didn’t circulate that well.

The way things are going, circulating coins and currency is fast becoming an anachronism any way. During the pandemic, people have used credit cards and on-line purchases. I can truthfully say that I have not spent a coin or bill since March.

 

The 1794 to 1803 dollars didn't do well because they were overvalued and were more profitably exported. Spanish 8 reales were also in circulation, and they were readily accepted, so size and weight were probably not a problem.

I think the 1840 to 1850 dollars probably did well. They were properly valued and would be more highly desired than the questionable paper money in circulation at the time. If anyone at that time was offered a choice between silver dollars and paper they would definitely have taken the coins. After 1850 you had the problem of the rising value of silver relative to gold making the metal in the coins worth more than their face value. That was further aggravated by the Coinage Act of 1853 that reduced the silver content of the minor coins but left the dollar coin unchanged. This resulted in the silver dollar having a metal value that fluctuated between $1.04 and $1.08. At the time a cent was not a piddling little sum, so passing a coin worth $1.04 for $1 would not have been popular. This resulted in the end of the circulation of the seated dollars.

By the time the Morgan dollars came along silver and paper were basically trading at par and with the new confidence that the paper could always be exchanged for silver at par, it was no longer imperative to always have "hard money" so the convenience of the lightweight paper won out over the coin. And it has been that way ever since. After 1968 the paper could no longer be exchanged for "hard money" just base metal, so it then really came down to just a choice over the weight, and again the paper wins out.

 

Thre was a period of time where the Morgan dollar had substantially less than a dollar's worth of intrinsic value. This meant that after production and storage costs, the treasury was still turning a profit (seignorage) for every dollar made, even counting the printing costs of the dollar bills they backed.

 

I agree. I would note as a Canadian almost all the cash I use are Loonies and Toonies, but now that I can have my Visa on apple pay protected by a strong password on my iPhone I have almost no reason to carry cash