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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 2689311, member: 11668&quot;]Again, these numbers are badly out of date.&nbsp; The latest published figure for the average $1 bill lifespan is 70 months; for the cost of producing a $1 coin, about 33 cents.&nbsp; These are not small changes; overall, the cost-effectiveness ratio between the $1 bill and $1 coin has shifted by more than a factor of ten.</p><p><br /></p><p>We could have saved money by switching to a $1 coin in 1977 or 1990 or even 2000.&nbsp; But that window of opportunity closed several years ago.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Short answer: the FRBs have higher-tech equipment that does a much better job of sorting still-usable currency from worn-out currency, so that far less still-usable currency gets prematurely shredded than once did.&nbsp; So the maximum lifespan of a bill hasn&#039;t gotten longer, but a much larger percentage of bills are living out their maximum lifespan, and that brings the average lifespan way up.</p><p><br /></p><p>If anyone&#039;s interested, there&#039;s a detailed cost-benefit anaylsis of the $1 coin vs. the $1 bill in <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/files/staff-working-paper-20131211.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/files/staff-working-paper-20131211.pdf" rel="nofollow">this Fed working paper</a> from December 2013.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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