The US Mint tries every trick it knows but it can’t somehow make the one dollar coin stick. Well, I should say that they’ve tried everything except making the coin out of some metal that has a market value!
The BBC reports: “Since the presidential coin programme began, the US government has spent an additional $30m to promote them but they still have not taken hold…. US officials say a peculiar set of factors have hindered public acceptance of the $1 coin.”
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People are afraid of change.
@Current. HAHAHA, that is a great line! Well said.
Very good.
Then why do they keep putting ‘changelings’ into the Presidency(and Congress and all elected offices)?
youself included?
I live in Ireland where we regularly use 2 euro coins which are worth ~$2.56.
I wonder why they aren’t catching on in the US.
gee, that’s Cu-rious.
A periodic-table joke. awesome.
I have noticed a trend in my office lately… people are decorating with dollar bills. The of the desks around me have a dollar bill used in some sort of whimsical display. For instance, there is a desk with a Master Chief action figure and the dollar bill has been used as a skirt, a flag or a pimp cane. It seems as though the dollar bill is the new penny… just about worthless.
I’d gladly take that inventory of the banks’ hands, for no charge.
I’ll do you one better, and take them off their hands at the current market value of the metal they’re made of.
My bet is that all the stores, and various places have change drawers with enough space for pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters. The dollar coins don’t have a slot, and are thus dropped into the safe at the end of the shift. Since there is never a reason to take them out of the safe to fill a drawer they are just sent back to the bank. Thats how it works at my job at least.
Phase out the $1 notes and the dollar coins will stay.
That or just pay everyone in $1 coins.
That doesn’t seem to work. Whoever gets it will just keep it. It is rare enough that they do. Also ever notice that when it comes to bank-notes people part with the dirty and worn out ones first and tend to keep the nice ones for later. Add that to the fact that small change is more easily spent. No wonder there is lot of $1 notes in circulation. $1 coins stays put.
But, if someone making $80k at the Fed was given a bag with 80,000 $1 coins, he would have little choice but to spend those.
Or he could take it out of circulation by deposit it in a bank and using his debit card at the ATM.
Got me there. Let’s just hope they can keep their change in denominations of $5 bills.
The engraving is on the level of a Chuck E. Cheese token, too. Apparently there are things even we (the editorial we, apologies to all present) won’t swallow when it comes to fiat tokens.
I bet the Chuck E. Cheese tokens are worth more.
It’s just like the public school system assigning 50 pounds of valueless textbooks to be carried on the backs of students. Fill their pockets with rocks and let them eat cake!
There is an upside to the massive weight in books to be carted around. I was in the best shape of my life during my years in public school. I guess there is a silver lining to lugging around 75lbs in textbooks and refusing to use the locker system that put my locker on the opposite side of the building of any of my classes.
So, my questions is whether the government subsidies of textbooks can overturn the Gov’t subsidies for food. Seeing that obesity is on the increase, I assume the Gov’t subsidizes food more than textbooks.
Pull the subsidies for locker storage and increase daily classes to 6 with requirements that all classes be at least 100 yards apart and 2 minutes to get there between periods.
“Fluff subsidies”?
Strange, I have about half a dozen 1921 dollar coins in the safe. Wouldn’t sell them for less than 20 FRN’s each. Might have something to do with the fact that those dollars are made of silver.
Those coins contain $0.06 worth of copper (please check my math, based on a price of USD $3.27/lb. (16 oz to a lb., 28 grams to an oz.)).
To me this indicates that when the world is forced back on the gold standard, the USD will be attempted to be devalued 94%.
This leads me to believe that this move has been in the works for some time. 94% very likely.
Educating Our Fellow Citizens
I use the one-dollar coins all the time, especially for small, hand-to-hand transactions. They are great for educating people about the nature of money.
People often comment, “You don’t see these very often.”
“I prefer to use them because we Americans don’t have to pay interest on the coins, whereas we pay interest on all the paper money circulating in the economy,” I say. “The paper notes are liabilities of the Federal Reserve System, America’s central bank. They are all loaned into the economy. Coins, on the other hand, are pure fiat money. They are spent into the economy by the Government.”
I often get a quizzical look, or even a nonsense statement like, “We are just paying the interest to ourselves.”
I typically clarify by pointing to debt financing: “Last year, Americans paid almost $300 billion on interest for the national debt. That represents approximately one-thousand dollars from each American taxpayer. If the Government printed its own money rather than borrowing credit that had been issued by central banks, there would be no interest payments.” I sometimes happen to be carrying a Treasury Note from the 1960s, which I can use to demonstrate the difference more dramatically.
Of course, I am no advocate of government fiat money. I often explain as much when ending a conversation with a merchant who has demonstrated a particularly strong interest: “Whereas Federal Reserve Notes are instruments of tyranny and usury,” I explain with a smile, “Treasury Notes are merely instruments of tyranny.”
30 Million dollars to promote the use of these coins? Yikes. They probably used their crony friends newspapers and magazines to advertise them. I don’t think they helped the failing publications if this was the case.
Like, for instance: It’s ugly. Just to name one “peculiar” factor.
Paper is too expensive! Well, ain’t that the truth! lol
The US Mint tries every trick it knows but it can’t somehow make the one dollar coin stick. Well, I should say that they’ve tried everything except making the coin out of some metal that has a market value!…………
the base metals do have market value. whether they are optimum for a market based money or as good as gold or silver i dont know. i gave some aluminum cans to a person in my parking lot the other day.
I didn’t realize they had such a thing. Some marketing campaign. I’ve never even seen one.
I guess you never buy stamps from a machine or ride on the DC metro. I actually kind of like them but I would rather have gold, obviously.
I agree with ‘ugly’ comments. Ever since mint foisted Anthony dollars on us, they have been creating the ugliest coins they could. I used to collect coins, but gave up, shocked by the bizarre array of Chuck E Cheese tokens that pass for currency. No two quarters look alike and pennies rust – embarrassing. I can’t even mock my in-laws’ Canadian loonies any more.
Maybe someone could photoshop on an “actual market value” for that coin fact sheet, in the same font etc.
I understand that they are ‘ugly’, but why does that really matter? The idea behind the coins isn’t to look at them all day… If you want a collectible coin go get a collectible coin. The idea is to use them to purchase goods and services… they could be the color of vomit and have big chunks out of it and it would still be valuable for purchasing goods and services. I think the biggest hangup for people is that they are heavy and obtrusive. It’s much easier to put a bill in your wallet than a coin.
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