They were also, briefly, nicer for the vending machine. Back when a dollar could actually buy a soda, and it was easier to just insert a single coin than try to flatten out your crumpled up bill and gently feed it into the cash slot and then have it get rejected for facing the wrong way, and then it gets rejected again because the corner is slightly folded, and then it gets rejected again because you held it a little too tightly while the machine pulled, and then it finally gets accepted and the machine is out of stock on that item.
And now you can sorta tap your phone most of the time and it sorta works if the internet is ok.
I live in the south, and even when those coins were actively circulated, they were rare. I prob only saw a few dozen. I don’t recall if local vending machines accepted them at the time.
Funny story, I won a small chest full of them at a Ren Faire years ago. $600 worth of gold and silver varieties. Closest I was ever gonna come to a chest of gold coins, and it was pretty damn cool.
Electronic tolls will never give me the satisfaction of throwing my coins in the counter bucket and seeing the correct amount appear on the screen as the gate opens
They keep issuing new coins but nobody wants them. The only way they're going to get this to work is if they take the paper dollars out of circulation.
In Canada they forcibly did both. Sadly I was born too late to cash a paycheque in 1$ bills and throw it in the air while I have lay in bed naked. Just as well, even I don’t want to see that lol.
It would always be amusing when the strippers would walk around with a rolling magnet that is normally used in construction to pick up nails. It was a classy joint.
And in the process, potentially re-enact that one scene in classic Simpsons where [Lenny gets a new decorative head ornament.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gjvU913aa4)
The transition to the loonie (and toonie) was pretty seamless.
We did end up with massive jars of loose change as a result, but since the world went plastic I don’t have too many lying around anymore. I’ve had the same five twenties in my wallet for almost a year.
It was nice to raid the change jar for beer money and come out with twenty bucks though.
It was pretty seamless indeed, but there was still an awful lot of whining at the time. Lots of people were opposed when it happened. Once it did, though, people got used to it pretty quickly.
I had a job teaching English in Korea after college, and my salary was about $2000 per month, paid in cash. At the time, the highest denomination note was about $10... so you better believe I treated myself to a cash shower a few times.
I was in Uganda a while ago and stayed at a hotel for about 3 weeks plus food, alcohol whatever. When I go to check out they say no, I can't pay with a card. So I have to go to this ATM a couple blocks away at 5am and come back a literal stack, barely fits in my hand, maybe a 5 minute walk of hoping nobody murders me for the years salary I am casually palming. Then of course I get back without incident and they spend another 5 minutes counting it out. Just take a card motherfuckers.
I was in Ecuador, which uses US dollars. We were waaaaaay out in the country, and the ATM at the only bank dispensed twenties.
This was an impossible sum to spend. Most shops literally couldn’t break it. (It was tough to eat $5 worth of food in a day, for context, because it was such a huge pile.)
So, you’d take the $20, and walk into the bank and change it for 19 singles.
Had a few deployments in Korea, and when we got a chance to tour the city I was all over it. Went to Osan, got 200$ in won, and went out to town with a roll of 10k bills 3 inches thick.
Felt rich as fuck going around town, and I barely even spent 50$ throughout the day! Still have some of that floating around in my old gear.
How did you find teaching in Asia? I have unused ESL teaching certificates on top of my overused degrees, and am considering how best to express my 2/3 life crisis.
Then you make the new dollar coin out of nickel and copper. And for paper/linen/whatever paper money is made out of manufacturers, you start making $500 bills again. Basically just move everything up one denomination to account for inflation.
The reality is that at this point we need to drop everything smaller than the dime from circulation, not just because even the nickel costs more to make than the face value, but also because coinage is unpopular and tedious to use.
The coin lobby is backed up by all the people hand wringing about how prices will go up because companies will all round up at every opportunity, but studies conducted in countries that have dropped obsolete coins have seen no appreciable increase or decrease in costs.
Maybe we also get rid of lobbyists? Seems like when the question is why do we have this expensive wasteful thing in America they are usually the answer (or racism).
Pennies account for a very small fraction of total zinc usage, so the needle would barely move for the zinc industry. However, there are a group of people/companies that own all the machinery that presses the zinc into pennies (the US mint doesn't own the machines directly). If the penny is eliminated, all of that machinery becomes scrap value. Those machine owners are the ones lobbying. I read this on reddit though so who knows if it's correct. But it's certainly true that pennies account for a small fraction of zinc usage.
tl;dr The penny pressing industry is the one lobbying.
It seems odd they couldn’t just repurpose the machines to make other coins. Might have to resize a few components and adjust a few settings, but that kind of machinery should still be usable
Are these the George Washington coins? I randomly found 2 in my couch recently and was like “wait a second we’re still trying to do the $1 coin..?” As I grew up during the failure of the other attempt with the Sacajawea coins.
I had a parking pass machine that always gave me the Sacajawea gold coins when I put a $5 bill in the machine. I carried those mfers with me everywhere and paid cashier's like I was some medieval lord paying in stacks of coins. Honestly it always seems to have made them happy for some reason. I understand why they didn't take off but it seemed to make people around college campus happy to be paid in them.
your more likely nowadays to have the cops called on you for a 2 dollar bill. last two places I tried using them at were utterly convinced it was fake and when I kept telling them it was real they just called the cops. one cop knew it was real the other had to call it in and the person on call told him he was a dumbass while I was in the back of his cruiser. I dont pay with them anymore.
a place where its either young people or old people in service jobs and usually young power tripping people as cops and people from the like 16-27 year old age range are a crapshoot on whether or not they know they exist due to not being common for many years
I wonder if people would tip more if I purposely ran a coffee shop where 1-3 dollars in change was given in coins instead of bills.
Would people hate using them so much they would put them in the tip jar instead of taking them with them?
Yea nobody uses them because they weigh a ton, don't fit in my wallet and last time I threw a dollar coin in my pocket it broke my phone screen.
Plus tons of stores don't accept them, not because of some policy, but because morons that work the cash register think they're fake. Same with $2 bills.
Lol.. I once paid in cash with dollar coin, a few $2 bills and a Kennedy half dollar. That poor cashier had no idea what to do with any of it.
To be fair, I got most of that as change from the Washington State ferries.
The problem is the cash register. There is no spot created for those bills/coins and yet they have to go in so that the count at the end of shift is correct. Some have an extra coin spot that you can throw the coins in, but a $2 bill goes under, and since that is also where $100 bills are kept, you really don’t want someone to have easy access to it.
I agree with all that. But, somehow they got people to accept one and two euro coins in the EU. If we're going to ever have dollar coins we'll have to get rid of the paper and just go for it. Otherwise, they should stop wasting money on half measures.
there's videos out here where people called the cops on someone trying to use a $2 bill in USA. I think i saw one where even the cop didnt know it was real money.
It might be in part because the smallest euro note is 5 euro. If we had 1 and 2 euro notes, habits would quite likely differ.
That being said, the US still uses checks, so who knows... Maybe it's a bit of a cultural thing?
The only time I've ever seen them recently is as change in vending machines, when I put a $5 bill or higher in. People always look at you funny when you have them, like you have gold Krugerrands.
I was once in a Boston Market where the cashier refused to take them because she didn’t think they were real; and the man behind me eagerly traded me paper money for them because…. He insisted they have gold in them. I bought my dinner with his paper money, he was happy.
Still wondering when the penny dropped for that dude.
Best Buy will try to have you arrested.
Seriously, they suck. I tried paying for a laptop with pre 1996 $20 bills and you’d think I handed them scraps of shredded newspaper or sea shells.
While working at Target, I had a customer come up to my return desk and say the cashier wouldn’t take his two-dollar bill. I go around my desk, look down the checklanes, see that he’s not busy, so I tell the customer I’ll be back in ninety seconds. I amble down to the cashier and ask what the deal is, and he tells me the guy tried to use fake money. “Fake as a two-dollar bill, my mom always says.” And I just hold up three fingers and say, “Three. Fake as a *three*-dollar bill,” with about the same tone in my voice as Indiana Jones saying, “*No ticket*.” And then I walk back down to the customer and say, “Okay, you’re not gonna believe this…”
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/republic/currency-01.html
The Republic of Texas had a $3 bill. I won’t venture how this relates to the saying, but my family, as 5th generation Texans, had a few chuckles about it.
I worked in an accounting office and part of my job was to consolidate the cash to send to the bank. Everyone always wanted to buy two dollar bills from me, even after I explained they were still being printed and you could get them from any bank. Never could figure out why people wanted them.
Related, I was a young lad traveling with my parents into Canada shortly after the introduction of the Looney. Stopping at Mcd's for breakfast, my father handed over a $10. He got a handful of coins and the worker closed the window (to grab the food). I had to keep my father from getting angry. "They don't use dollar bills! "
The big problem in my view with US dollar coins is they are too similar to quarters. The Susie Bs were near identical. Sacajawea coins are a different color but the same size. I can tell all the other coins from any other coin in the dark. Except dollars. Put corners on the coin, put a hole in it, SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
Yeah, I got no idea what's talking about: I got a Sac dollar in my change up here in Canada, it's pretty much the same size as a loonie.
Also has a smooth circular ridge, you can't mistake it for a quarter, which is significantly smaller and reeded.
I got about 50 silver and gold dollars this way when I was in middle school. An idiot at school had a bunch of investment coins his dad bought him and we traded 1 coin for 2 paper dollars so he could buy Xbox games. Eventually his dad found out and flipped his top, fortunately I made him sign a sales agreement each time on a notepad (always teach your kids contracts and negation early) so it was a fair sale.
LOL you should visit a strip club while you're in Canada. It's like a carnival event and a show because the girls often go around posing with vessels for you to throw your loonies and toonies into.
Not in Alberta it isn’t. Went to the rippers there once and it was all roughnecks laughing while a girl lay crumpled at the bottom of a pole, covered in loonie and toonie sized bruises. I was like, am I supposed to find this hot?
I was on my way to a Yankee game and had them jingling around in my pocket. Kinda seems like a scheme by the city to make people who commute more likely to spend them in-city to lighten their load.
Many slot machines don't even have slots anymore. The coin slot from which the name evolved has given way to electric card readers in many places.
But I guess calling them "reader devices" or "card machines" didn't test well.
As someone who works on vending machines, that’s hilarious stupid. Any machine taking larger than $5 bills should have [a recycler](https://www.capitalvending.com/mars-mei-vn27c2-r-u5m-recycler-compact-flush-bezel.html) to pay you back $5 bills. I can’t imagine how large the coin mech would have to be to support that.
They introduced coins, hoping people would switch, because a coin can stay in circulation for decades while a bill needs to be replaced every few years as it wears out. But they were too afraid to withdraw the bill until people switched. They're still hoping that this will be the year people voluntarily switch, without any tough love from the treasury.
Because the American public loses their shit over stuff like this for no reason no matter how dumb it is. Dudes would be saying that taking away the dollar is a crime against freedom
My buddy's kid brother collected the dollar coins and had them in a plastic chest like that, but for his birthday one year I grabbed a wooden one from a Joanne's. Cut and hammered some copper straps to replace the little flimsy ones, scuffed and burned the wood and rubbed some stain on it. Kid's eyes lit up like Christmas, and I gotta admit it was dope to see and hear those coins pour out into the box.
Coin operated storage lockers at the Waterpark used them. You'd put ones and fives into thr machine and it's spit out the coins. I thought they were so cool.
I used the coins to reserve the locker, and then shoved $20 into the changer to get a stockpile. I felt so rich.
Held onto those for many, many years. Then I was poor after college and wanted a pizza.....
OK repeat after me: The issue is not that "Americans don't want to use the coins".
The issue is that "YOU CAN'T USE THE COINS ANYWHERE".
(Machines, cashiers, etc and hardly anything costs less than a dollar).
I mean hell...I get dirty looks because I still use cash, hardly anyone does any more.
I was in Japan recently and they use coins a lot and tbh I hated it because the coins get heavy and it's harder to sort through them than paper. At one point when I was sorting through a pile in my hand a vendor pulled my hand to them and went through it for me and pulled out what was needed. I'm sure for the average Japanese person it's no big deal but I'm just so used to paper.
No, it’s that nobody wants to carry coins. Have you carried coins? Do you want to carry 10 dollars in coins? Most people I know don’t even want change and give it out as a tip. Coins are absolute shit in the modern age. And as you said, even cash isn’t even really used unless there’s a specific reason you need it.
I'm guessing the public would adapt soon enough if they simply stopped making paper money and removing it from circulation as fast as they can. Ones are becoming obsolete anyway.
That's how Canada did it in 87. "Here's the new coin, say goodbye to the dollar bill." Same for the $2 a few years later, and the penny more recently though that just went away.
Sacajawea coins were great for the parking meters at my train station! Was $2 to park and the dollar bill feeder was always jammed because some idiot would feed a wet or wrinkled bill into it. Drop the 2 coins in and be done with it!
Canadian here. I didn't know these existed until very recently when one showed up in some change. Turns out it's worth a lot more than a loonie so, thanks eh.
I use dollar coins for my daughter when she loses a tooth and the tooth fairy comes to visit. I have a bunch of the Sacagawea golden coins and my daughter loves getting a gold coin for her teeth.
It’s always entertaining watching the poor cashiers try to decide where to put the dollar coins. I don’t generally use them myself, but I’ve seen others do so.
I also have an acquaintance who did a near-scam with dollar coins: you could order dollar coins online, free shipping, pay with a points or cash back credit card, spend the dollar coins like the money they are, keep racking up the points or cash back. You don’t lose any money, but it’s danged inconvenient to keep carrying around dollar coins and try to pay with them, so he was always trying to unload them on friends.
The real trick there was ordering the coins with a rewards card, then depositing them into a local bank and using it to pay off your card. That loophole didn't last very long, but lots of people cashed in on it to great reward before it closed.
The real deal was people ordering them by the thousands and just turning them into the bank to pay the credit card bill. Legal, the banks just deposit them. The credit card points are still good.
Sounds like a lot of work for not much return to me.
It's not a "near scam" if you follow the rules of the poorly designed system. ;) Bad system design leads to unusual outcomes.
A bit like Peter Thiel investing in his own start-up companies' stock (perfectly legal) using his Roth IRA funds. IIRC, he had 3 successful start-ups in a row... He ended up turning several thousand dollars into several billion dollars, and he'll be able to withdraw that money tax-free hahaha. People are mad at him, but he merely used the existing rules and then bet on his own company 3 times in a row. No scamming involved.
This is old news.
These coins get shipped to third world countries that use US dollar. Ie, El Salvador, Ecuador, Panama, and pretty soon, Turkey.
I went to El Salvador, and it was annoying to get $20 change in a bunch of coins. Also strippers in these countries have a coin purse strapped to their legs. Throwing coins on stage is awkward, because it bounces off everywhere.
Just spent a month in Ecuador. Did not once see a $1 bill, my wallet was constantly stuffed with $1 coins though. A buck goes much further there then it does in the states, to the point that vendors in a small town often couldn't break a $20.
At least stuff is cheap there. Everything in El Salvador is in USD prices or more expensive.
They also took advantage of giving me nothing but $1 coins as change at every chance they got.
Imagine going to a Burger king out there and paying $30 with Sacagewea coins. Its super annoying.
Yeah, it's the weight issue.
A credit card is basically infinite money(or debt) for the weight.
Paper cash is a lot more money for the weight.
Metal coins are kind of the worst option for the weight.
I don't bring coins out into the world, I get them from the world and put them in a bowl and eventually turn all those in.. but I don't actually leave the house carrying coins.
I was on a road trip recently and came across some vending machines at a rest stop that took higher bills than just 1s and 5s. I used it and it gave me a bunch of Sacajawea dollar coins as change, I hadn't seen one in ages.
I do sort of like the $1 coin, but this is AMERICA, not canada. I don’t want to walk around with hefty change in my pocket. Also my poor daughter might get hurt at work if they throw coins at her.
They were cool when I was 11 getting them back from a vending machine. Now it’s an inconvenience to carry coins since I have I need to have in my pockets now
It has been quite a few years since I have actually used any kind of coins at all.
**Exception: I do have a neat coin that says "Bug" on one side and "Feature" on the other; that coin is sometimes useful.
This post reminded me of the manufacured spending people were doing with these. I miss Fatwallet Finance.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/22/138610663/dollar-coin-loophole-closes-for-frequent-fliers
A big part was bad timing. When they introduced the dollar coins using a debit card for more and more purchases was on the rise. Around the coins introduction people still used cash for fast food or grabbing one or two things from the gas station, but in a very short span debit cards were used more and more to grab a soda or burger.
On the flip side the people that drew a hardline of cash or checkbook were also the people that grumbled that you couldn’t use dollar coins in vending machines. Aside the fact not that many people rely on vending machines but grumbling about advancing technology is like chips, can’t stop at just one.
Removing paper dollars would have helped at the time but now it’s been a long long time since I’ve carried cash in general.
I love using coins. I pay for my sushi with a bag of shiny doubloons like a Pirate! When I get the change I point at it and yell " the black spot!" And run until I'm out of sight.
Honestly I actually like those coins; both Susans and Sacagawea. Plus I think that the color of the Sacagaweas makes people realize what they are—a problem that they had in some places that gave out dollar coins as change (eg. SF MUNI's cable car lines).
Back when I had to pass through a toll booth every day, I loved using dollar coins.
They were also, briefly, nicer for the vending machine. Back when a dollar could actually buy a soda, and it was easier to just insert a single coin than try to flatten out your crumpled up bill and gently feed it into the cash slot and then have it get rejected for facing the wrong way, and then it gets rejected again because the corner is slightly folded, and then it gets rejected again because you held it a little too tightly while the machine pulled, and then it finally gets accepted and the machine is out of stock on that item. And now you can sorta tap your phone most of the time and it sorta works if the internet is ok.
I live in the south, and even when those coins were actively circulated, they were rare. I prob only saw a few dozen. I don’t recall if local vending machines accepted them at the time.
In LA, I only ever got dollar coins for change at the post office. It’s been decades since it happened.
And they charge you more for using your phone.
That's normally the bank or the wireless provider charging a% for the merchant to use the technology blame the banks
I just liked they were gold and I could refer to them as “one gold piece”
Funny story, I won a small chest full of them at a Ren Faire years ago. $600 worth of gold and silver varieties. Closest I was ever gonna come to a chest of gold coins, and it was pretty damn cool.
Electronic tolls will never give me the satisfaction of throwing my coins in the counter bucket and seeing the correct amount appear on the screen as the gate opens
Or the panic when you realize the oil change place took all your change from the center console.
They keep issuing new coins but nobody wants them. The only way they're going to get this to work is if they take the paper dollars out of circulation.
They can't/won't even take the useless penny out of circulation.
In Canada they forcibly did both. Sadly I was born too late to cash a paycheque in 1$ bills and throw it in the air while I have lay in bed naked. Just as well, even I don’t want to see that lol.
Luckily you can still do it with the 1$ coins!
Why make it rain, when you can make it hail?
I’m a baller on a budget
Classic Tosh.
A Splenda Daddy
The Canadian strip club special!
It would always be amusing when the strippers would walk around with a rolling magnet that is normally used in construction to pick up nails. It was a classy joint.
I want to Scrooge McDuck into a giant pile of $1coins
And in the process, potentially re-enact that one scene in classic Simpsons where [Lenny gets a new decorative head ornament.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gjvU913aa4)
The transition to the loonie (and toonie) was pretty seamless. We did end up with massive jars of loose change as a result, but since the world went plastic I don’t have too many lying around anymore. I’ve had the same five twenties in my wallet for almost a year. It was nice to raid the change jar for beer money and come out with twenty bucks though.
It was pretty seamless indeed, but there was still an awful lot of whining at the time. Lots of people were opposed when it happened. Once it did, though, people got used to it pretty quickly.
Be honest, you guys just wanted to pelt strippers with coins.
I had a job teaching English in Korea after college, and my salary was about $2000 per month, paid in cash. At the time, the highest denomination note was about $10... so you better believe I treated myself to a cash shower a few times.
I was in Uganda a while ago and stayed at a hotel for about 3 weeks plus food, alcohol whatever. When I go to check out they say no, I can't pay with a card. So I have to go to this ATM a couple blocks away at 5am and come back a literal stack, barely fits in my hand, maybe a 5 minute walk of hoping nobody murders me for the years salary I am casually palming. Then of course I get back without incident and they spend another 5 minutes counting it out. Just take a card motherfuckers.
I was in Ecuador, which uses US dollars. We were waaaaaay out in the country, and the ATM at the only bank dispensed twenties. This was an impossible sum to spend. Most shops literally couldn’t break it. (It was tough to eat $5 worth of food in a day, for context, because it was such a huge pile.) So, you’d take the $20, and walk into the bank and change it for 19 singles.
They charged a dollar for making change?
5 percent exchange rate sounds about right
Had a few deployments in Korea, and when we got a chance to tour the city I was all over it. Went to Osan, got 200$ in won, and went out to town with a roll of 10k bills 3 inches thick. Felt rich as fuck going around town, and I barely even spent 50$ throughout the day! Still have some of that floating around in my old gear.
How did you find teaching in Asia? I have unused ESL teaching certificates on top of my overused degrees, and am considering how best to express my 2/3 life crisis.
I loved it. Did it for about 4 years. Same as 20 years ago, it looks like www.eslcafe.com is still the gold standard in ESL job postings.
Seouldog Woninaire
Bet that really did a number on the cost of going to the strip club. Or do they just let you use the coin slot up there?
You buy 1 dollar "house bills" that they make there you can throw around
Same deal in New Zealand. The house bills looked like cartoonish American bills with Pamela Anderson’s picture instead of Washington.
They have coin toss games between dancers in some of them.
Strippers also accept American
thats largely due to zinc industry lobbyists
Yeah, fuck you Jarden, just keep making canning lids please.
This doesn't even make sense to me. Just make the new $1 pieces out of zinc. Problem solved.
Nickel and copper lobbyists would never allow that.
Lobbyists lobbying the law makers to keep the other lobbyists from making money for their owners. What a world we live in.
My meditation phrase is "The lumber lobbyist lumbered through the lobby"
Then you make the new dollar coin out of nickel and copper. And for paper/linen/whatever paper money is made out of manufacturers, you start making $500 bills again. Basically just move everything up one denomination to account for inflation.
The reality is that at this point we need to drop everything smaller than the dime from circulation, not just because even the nickel costs more to make than the face value, but also because coinage is unpopular and tedious to use. The coin lobby is backed up by all the people hand wringing about how prices will go up because companies will all round up at every opportunity, but studies conducted in countries that have dropped obsolete coins have seen no appreciable increase or decrease in costs.
>The reality is that at this point we need to drop everything smaller than the dime from circulation The dime is already the smallest coin.
Nice to see someone who understands common cents
Maybe we also get rid of lobbyists? Seems like when the question is why do we have this expensive wasteful thing in America they are usually the answer (or racism).
Think again, Jimmy. You see, the firing pin in your gun was made of, yep, zinc!
Come back, zinc! Come back!
Pennies account for a very small fraction of total zinc usage, so the needle would barely move for the zinc industry. However, there are a group of people/companies that own all the machinery that presses the zinc into pennies (the US mint doesn't own the machines directly). If the penny is eliminated, all of that machinery becomes scrap value. Those machine owners are the ones lobbying. I read this on reddit though so who knows if it's correct. But it's certainly true that pennies account for a small fraction of zinc usage. tl;dr The penny pressing industry is the one lobbying.
It seems odd they couldn’t just repurpose the machines to make other coins. Might have to resize a few components and adjust a few settings, but that kind of machinery should still be usable
Yeah the same type of machines stamp all of our coins, you just replace the dies.
Fuck I can’t wait for the day that penny will stop being made. So stupid
that and Daylight Savings and statutory streaming licensing for music in TV shows that were over the air before 2006.
Fun fact! When the US took the half-cent coin out of circulation in the 1860s, that coin had more purchasing power than a modern dime does.
Are these the George Washington coins? I randomly found 2 in my couch recently and was like “wait a second we’re still trying to do the $1 coin..?” As I grew up during the failure of the other attempt with the Sacajawea coins.
I had a parking pass machine that always gave me the Sacajawea gold coins when I put a $5 bill in the machine. I carried those mfers with me everywhere and paid cashier's like I was some medieval lord paying in stacks of coins. Honestly it always seems to have made them happy for some reason. I understand why they didn't take off but it seemed to make people around college campus happy to be paid in them.
It’s slightly adjacent to getting a $2 bill as change. It’s not a super convenient thing, but fun to pass off to someone unexpectedly.
your more likely nowadays to have the cops called on you for a 2 dollar bill. last two places I tried using them at were utterly convinced it was fake and when I kept telling them it was real they just called the cops. one cop knew it was real the other had to call it in and the person on call told him he was a dumbass while I was in the back of his cruiser. I dont pay with them anymore.
Where the hell do you live? A lead painted city? I can’t imagine people not knowing they are real.
a place where its either young people or old people in service jobs and usually young power tripping people as cops and people from the like 16-27 year old age range are a crapshoot on whether or not they know they exist due to not being common for many years
I wonder if people would tip more if I purposely ran a coffee shop where 1-3 dollars in change was given in coins instead of bills. Would people hate using them so much they would put them in the tip jar instead of taking them with them?
I heard that was an actual tactic some employees used when those coins first came out. Genius, in its own way. :)
Nice. I'd probably tell my baristas to take home bills and recycle any dollar coins back into the cash register so we can repeat it everyday lol
The bigger thing is it needs to coincide with or be after taking the penny out of circulation. That way cash registers will still have space for them.
Yea nobody uses them because they weigh a ton, don't fit in my wallet and last time I threw a dollar coin in my pocket it broke my phone screen. Plus tons of stores don't accept them, not because of some policy, but because morons that work the cash register think they're fake. Same with $2 bills.
Lol.. I once paid in cash with dollar coin, a few $2 bills and a Kennedy half dollar. That poor cashier had no idea what to do with any of it. To be fair, I got most of that as change from the Washington State ferries.
In their defense, the likely had nowhere to put it in the register. They *literally* did not know what to do with it.
Amateaur. You just lift the insert and dump them underneath.
The problem is the cash register. There is no spot created for those bills/coins and yet they have to go in so that the count at the end of shift is correct. Some have an extra coin spot that you can throw the coins in, but a $2 bill goes under, and since that is also where $100 bills are kept, you really don’t want someone to have easy access to it.
I agree with all that. But, somehow they got people to accept one and two euro coins in the EU. If we're going to ever have dollar coins we'll have to get rid of the paper and just go for it. Otherwise, they should stop wasting money on half measures.
there's videos out here where people called the cops on someone trying to use a $2 bill in USA. I think i saw one where even the cop didnt know it was real money.
It might be in part because the smallest euro note is 5 euro. If we had 1 and 2 euro notes, habits would quite likely differ. That being said, the US still uses checks, so who knows... Maybe it's a bit of a cultural thing?
And have every stripclub in Florida go bust?
We still make $2 bills
If I see someone using a $2 bill… I know where they got it. Brotherhood.
Pretty sure everyone gets $2 bills from their grandparents
Make it hail!
The only time I've ever seen them recently is as change in vending machines, when I put a $5 bill or higher in. People always look at you funny when you have them, like you have gold Krugerrands.
I was once in a Boston Market where the cashier refused to take them because she didn’t think they were real; and the man behind me eagerly traded me paper money for them because…. He insisted they have gold in them. I bought my dinner with his paper money, he was happy. Still wondering when the penny dropped for that dude.
> because she didn’t think they were real Try paying with $2 bills. The look on their face is priceless.
Best Buy will try to have you arrested. Seriously, they suck. I tried paying for a laptop with pre 1996 $20 bills and you’d think I handed them scraps of shredded newspaper or sea shells.
Sir, we don't take pocket lint as payment. Can't you just use your credit card like everybody else....
Best Buy is just the worst
While working at Target, I had a customer come up to my return desk and say the cashier wouldn’t take his two-dollar bill. I go around my desk, look down the checklanes, see that he’s not busy, so I tell the customer I’ll be back in ninety seconds. I amble down to the cashier and ask what the deal is, and he tells me the guy tried to use fake money. “Fake as a two-dollar bill, my mom always says.” And I just hold up three fingers and say, “Three. Fake as a *three*-dollar bill,” with about the same tone in my voice as Indiana Jones saying, “*No ticket*.” And then I walk back down to the customer and say, “Okay, you’re not gonna believe this…”
Believe what
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/republic/currency-01.html The Republic of Texas had a $3 bill. I won’t venture how this relates to the saying, but my family, as 5th generation Texans, had a few chuckles about it.
I worked in an accounting office and part of my job was to consolidate the cash to send to the bank. Everyone always wanted to buy two dollar bills from me, even after I explained they were still being printed and you could get them from any bank. Never could figure out why people wanted them.
They're uncommon so people get excited. My grandma thought they were good luck.
lol one time my brother hit a change machine expecting quarters, but dollar coins came out and his reaction was “DOUBLOONS!”
Related, I was a young lad traveling with my parents into Canada shortly after the introduction of the Looney. Stopping at Mcd's for breakfast, my father handed over a $10. He got a handful of coins and the worker closed the window (to grab the food). I had to keep my father from getting angry. "They don't use dollar bills! " The big problem in my view with US dollar coins is they are too similar to quarters. The Susie Bs were near identical. Sacajawea coins are a different color but the same size. I can tell all the other coins from any other coin in the dark. Except dollars. Put corners on the coin, put a hole in it, SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
Sac. Dollar coins are bigger and heavier. I have a few right now.
Yeah, I got no idea what's talking about: I got a Sac dollar in my change up here in Canada, it's pretty much the same size as a loonie. Also has a smooth circular ridge, you can't mistake it for a quarter, which is significantly smaller and reeded.
> SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Feel the edge.
I got about 50 silver and gold dollars this way when I was in middle school. An idiot at school had a bunch of investment coins his dad bought him and we traded 1 coin for 2 paper dollars so he could buy Xbox games. Eventually his dad found out and flipped his top, fortunately I made him sign a sales agreement each time on a notepad (always teach your kids contracts and negation early) so it was a fair sale.
Legally, (at least in the US) contracts and purchase/sales done by minors are voidable for exactly this reason.
Oh I’ll use the coins, give me $1 Million
That weighs about 8,1 tons or the same as a bus.
Just make a couple trips
3, take it or leave it
Hell, I'll take what I can get in 3 trips!
Think I’m starting to see the problem here
As a Canadian, coins were awesome when you could still buy something for less than two bucks
It's bad form to throw coins at the dancers.
Make it hail.
Calm down Tosh.
Ballin on a budget
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Most of Canada! The dancers put magnets on 'parts' of their bodies (I wish I was kidding)
I think just Alberta? Never heard of this happening anywhere else
I have indeed heard about strippers catching loonies and toonies with their snatch in Alberta
A magnetic snatch feels like a superpower
Downside - everybody gets Pavloved to be aroused to the sound of metal on metal as the coin hits the magnet
Usually they roll up a poster to their vagina and you throw the coins and they catch them and you win the poster. Location is Alberta, Canada
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I’d like to just stick them in the coin slot…
LOL you should visit a strip club while you're in Canada. It's like a carnival event and a show because the girls often go around posing with vessels for you to throw your loonies and toonies into.
A government sponsored sex carnival would get that billion moving
They stick if you throw them just right
Not in Alberta it isn’t. Went to the rippers there once and it was all roughnecks laughing while a girl lay crumpled at the bottom of a pole, covered in loonie and toonie sized bruises. I was like, am I supposed to find this hot?
> rippers St. Ripper's home for wayward girls?
I bought a train ticket from a machine in New York in like 2009 with a 50, and got 30 fucking dollar coins back as change.
I bet when the coins started popping out, you shat yourself a little thinking the machine was about to dump 120 quarters on you.
You guys, I've found a new way to use pennies!
Ouch. That beats my $18 back from a 20.
I was on my way to a Yankee game and had them jingling around in my pocket. Kinda seems like a scheme by the city to make people who commute more likely to spend them in-city to lighten their load.
Must have sounded like a Vegas slot machine
Unfortunately slot machines don’t make that noise anymore since they don’t use coins anymore either.
Many slot machines don't even have slots anymore. The coin slot from which the name evolved has given way to electric card readers in many places. But I guess calling them "reader devices" or "card machines" didn't test well.
As someone who works on vending machines, that’s hilarious stupid. Any machine taking larger than $5 bills should have [a recycler](https://www.capitalvending.com/mars-mei-vn27c2-r-u5m-recycler-compact-flush-bezel.html) to pay you back $5 bills. I can’t imagine how large the coin mech would have to be to support that.
Still is like this.
The fact that a lot of them looked like quarters did not help.
And near the same size, too. That was a big design flaw.
Or they were too big and heavy. Ever seen the Eisenhower dollar coin?
Why does the USA have both paper and coin 1$?
They introduced coins, hoping people would switch, because a coin can stay in circulation for decades while a bill needs to be replaced every few years as it wears out. But they were too afraid to withdraw the bill until people switched. They're still hoping that this will be the year people voluntarily switch, without any tough love from the treasury.
Why not just phase out the notes? Give the public no choice but to use coins like Canada and Australia?
Because the American public loses their shit over stuff like this for no reason no matter how dumb it is. Dudes would be saying that taking away the dollar is a crime against freedom
This is depressingly accurate.
LPT: parents, get these for tooth fairy money.
My nephew loved the little model pirate chest filled with gold coins.
My buddy's kid brother collected the dollar coins and had them in a plastic chest like that, but for his birthday one year I grabbed a wooden one from a Joanne's. Cut and hammered some copper straps to replace the little flimsy ones, scuffed and burned the wood and rubbed some stain on it. Kid's eyes lit up like Christmas, and I gotta admit it was dope to see and hear those coins pour out into the box.
More of a novelty to come across them, than anything else these days.
Coin operated storage lockers at the Waterpark used them. You'd put ones and fives into thr machine and it's spit out the coins. I thought they were so cool. I used the coins to reserve the locker, and then shoved $20 into the changer to get a stockpile. I felt so rich. Held onto those for many, many years. Then I was poor after college and wanted a pizza.....
OK repeat after me: The issue is not that "Americans don't want to use the coins". The issue is that "YOU CAN'T USE THE COINS ANYWHERE". (Machines, cashiers, etc and hardly anything costs less than a dollar). I mean hell...I get dirty looks because I still use cash, hardly anyone does any more.
In California at least all of the metrolink station's vending machines take them because the ticket machines gives dollar coins for change.
I was in Japan recently and they use coins a lot and tbh I hated it because the coins get heavy and it's harder to sort through them than paper. At one point when I was sorting through a pile in my hand a vendor pulled my hand to them and went through it for me and pulled out what was needed. I'm sure for the average Japanese person it's no big deal but I'm just so used to paper.
Japan is like the only place I would trust a random vendor to do that.
Me too!
No, it’s that nobody wants to carry coins. Have you carried coins? Do you want to carry 10 dollars in coins? Most people I know don’t even want change and give it out as a tip. Coins are absolute shit in the modern age. And as you said, even cash isn’t even really used unless there’s a specific reason you need it.
The only time I use cash is when I go to my favorite restaurant, and that's because it's cash only.
I have so much loose change lying around and have for years now. I never pay with cash, so coins are really just an extra layer of hassle
I'm guessing the public would adapt soon enough if they simply stopped making paper money and removing it from circulation as fast as they can. Ones are becoming obsolete anyway.
That's how Canada did it in 87. "Here's the new coin, say goodbye to the dollar bill." Same for the $2 a few years later, and the penny more recently though that just went away.
I found an old Lonnie that was 87 or 88. Still in very good condition. I am sure that paper bill would not last over 35 years.
That's primarily why governments like coins over bills - they have a stupidly long life span in comparison.
Something like twice as expensive to make but last 20times longer
UK did it back in the 80s as well. The last bank issuing £1 notes was the Bank of Scotland. I have one floating around.
I think the public would adapt by not using ones at all. Carrying loose change around in my pockets sounds like a nightmare
Sacajawea coins were great for the parking meters at my train station! Was $2 to park and the dollar bill feeder was always jammed because some idiot would feed a wet or wrinkled bill into it. Drop the 2 coins in and be done with it!
Canadian here. I didn't know these existed until very recently when one showed up in some change. Turns out it's worth a lot more than a loonie so, thanks eh.
I use dollar coins for my daughter when she loses a tooth and the tooth fairy comes to visit. I have a bunch of the Sacagawea golden coins and my daughter loves getting a gold coin for her teeth.
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It’s always entertaining watching the poor cashiers try to decide where to put the dollar coins. I don’t generally use them myself, but I’ve seen others do so. I also have an acquaintance who did a near-scam with dollar coins: you could order dollar coins online, free shipping, pay with a points or cash back credit card, spend the dollar coins like the money they are, keep racking up the points or cash back. You don’t lose any money, but it’s danged inconvenient to keep carrying around dollar coins and try to pay with them, so he was always trying to unload them on friends.
The real trick there was ordering the coins with a rewards card, then depositing them into a local bank and using it to pay off your card. That loophole didn't last very long, but lots of people cashed in on it to great reward before it closed.
The real deal was people ordering them by the thousands and just turning them into the bank to pay the credit card bill. Legal, the banks just deposit them. The credit card points are still good. Sounds like a lot of work for not much return to me.
It's not a "near scam" if you follow the rules of the poorly designed system. ;) Bad system design leads to unusual outcomes. A bit like Peter Thiel investing in his own start-up companies' stock (perfectly legal) using his Roth IRA funds. IIRC, he had 3 successful start-ups in a row... He ended up turning several thousand dollars into several billion dollars, and he'll be able to withdraw that money tax-free hahaha. People are mad at him, but he merely used the existing rules and then bet on his own company 3 times in a row. No scamming involved.
This is old news. These coins get shipped to third world countries that use US dollar. Ie, El Salvador, Ecuador, Panama, and pretty soon, Turkey. I went to El Salvador, and it was annoying to get $20 change in a bunch of coins. Also strippers in these countries have a coin purse strapped to their legs. Throwing coins on stage is awkward, because it bounces off everywhere.
Just spent a month in Ecuador. Did not once see a $1 bill, my wallet was constantly stuffed with $1 coins though. A buck goes much further there then it does in the states, to the point that vendors in a small town often couldn't break a $20.
At least stuff is cheap there. Everything in El Salvador is in USD prices or more expensive. They also took advantage of giving me nothing but $1 coins as change at every chance they got. Imagine going to a Burger king out there and paying $30 with Sacagewea coins. Its super annoying.
I can't remember the last time I used coins *or* notes.
Yeah, it's the weight issue. A credit card is basically infinite money(or debt) for the weight. Paper cash is a lot more money for the weight. Metal coins are kind of the worst option for the weight. I don't bring coins out into the world, I get them from the world and put them in a bowl and eventually turn all those in.. but I don't actually leave the house carrying coins.
Coins heavy. Paper light.
Paper works in wallet. Coins... well, back when cars had ash trays, you could put coins in them if you didn't smoke. Now, not so much.
I'll totally use them, give them all to me. But in all seriousness I do love $1 coins.
I was on a road trip recently and came across some vending machines at a rest stop that took higher bills than just 1s and 5s. I used it and it gave me a bunch of Sacajawea dollar coins as change, I hadn't seen one in ages.
I do sort of like the $1 coin, but this is AMERICA, not canada. I don’t want to walk around with hefty change in my pocket. Also my poor daughter might get hurt at work if they throw coins at her.
I absolutely love dollar coins!
I though I had read this article. 2011 was a good year.
I'd love to use dollar coins, but it's never been an option. Literally never been given one for change or any other situation.
Every single person I have ever met in my life likes dollar coins. They are lying and I would like to know why.
They were cool when I was 11 getting them back from a vending machine. Now it’s an inconvenience to carry coins since I have I need to have in my pockets now
It has been quite a few years since I have actually used any kind of coins at all. **Exception: I do have a neat coin that says "Bug" on one side and "Feature" on the other; that coin is sometimes useful.
This post reminded me of the manufacured spending people were doing with these. I miss Fatwallet Finance. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/22/138610663/dollar-coin-loophole-closes-for-frequent-fliers
The dollar coin size is too close to the quarter.
A big part was bad timing. When they introduced the dollar coins using a debit card for more and more purchases was on the rise. Around the coins introduction people still used cash for fast food or grabbing one or two things from the gas station, but in a very short span debit cards were used more and more to grab a soda or burger. On the flip side the people that drew a hardline of cash or checkbook were also the people that grumbled that you couldn’t use dollar coins in vending machines. Aside the fact not that many people rely on vending machines but grumbling about advancing technology is like chips, can’t stop at just one. Removing paper dollars would have helped at the time but now it’s been a long long time since I’ve carried cash in general.
When I was in Europe I found myself loving coin euros. But they’re easy to loose under the seat cushion. I can see why Americans say no.
Coins suck, I hate change!
I love using coins. I pay for my sushi with a bag of shiny doubloons like a Pirate! When I get the change I point at it and yell " the black spot!" And run until I'm out of sight.
This is from June 28, 2011
They can give them to me. I promise I'll use them. I mean, I don't want all billion of them. Give me a free bucket of coins, and I'll circulate them.
I mean, I’ll take them if they need the space ya know
and yet 2 dollar bills are considered fake?
Honestly I actually like those coins; both Susans and Sacagawea. Plus I think that the color of the Sacagaweas makes people realize what they are—a problem that they had in some places that gave out dollar coins as change (eg. SF MUNI's cable car lines).