Thursday, February 15, 2007

Your Thoughts: Will you use the new $1 coin?

Today, the U.S. Mint is issuing a gold-color "Presidential Dollar" coin that it hopes will appeal to collectors and consumers, unlike the wallflower Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony dollar coins.
As such the Prince of thrift, would like to know what you think. Do like a dollar coin? Hate the thought? Neutral? Whatever, your thoughts, DebtFree4ever.net would like to know what you think.

Edmund Moy, director of the U.S. Mint, said the relentless pace of inflation means the time is ripe for a higher-denomination coin.

"A quarter doesn't buy a whole lot in a parking meter anymore," he said. "You've got to carry a sack of quarters around to plug that meter. Laundry, car washes are very coin-intensive services."

Weighing 8.1 grams, the same as the Sacagawea, a Presidential Dollar is lighter than four quarters, which weigh 5.5 grams each.

But Moy thinks a bigger plus for the new dollars is their novelty. He hopes they will, ahem, mint a new generation of amateur numismatists.

The Mint will issue the coins as a rotating limited-edition series, one for each president, following the order in which they served.

OK, so I will start it off. I personally like the idea. The U. S. mint should do what Canada did 20-years ago. Discontinue the $1 bill all together and just go with the $1 coin. In so doing the American public wouldn't have a choice and would have to adopt to the new coin.
Speaking from a frugalist point of view, currency wears out and has to be replaced every couple of years. Where as coins, don't wear out and can last forever, at least theoretically.
OK, so now you know what I think, what are your thoughts?

6 comments:

  1. I personally won't use it. Where am I going to put them? My wallet doesn't handle change well and I'm not going to start carrying a change purse around with me. I don't have a lifestyle that requires change (parking meters, laundrymats, etc).

    I use plastic most of the time to avoid getting change back because it just ends up sitting in a jar or the center console of my car for a year until I round it all up and go to a coinstar machine.

    If the cost of the currency is such a big issue why don't we just force everyone to start only using debit / credit cards? That would take the burden of producing it completely off the taxpayers hand.

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  2. I'll use it... though I think physical currency will soon (in a generation or two) be a thing of the past. I picked up two rolls of the new $1s from the bank on Saturday. Keeping one and trying to put the rest into circulation... though my cashiers probably won't give them back out as change if they're nervous about people giving them funny looks. Many retailers don't even know about the coins yet.

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  3. None for me, thank you.
    The biggest problem is that there is not a slot for them in a cash register. The second strike against them is that Lincoln came out with the term "greenback" and it stuck. It's hard to undo a piece of American tradition.
    And last of all, dollar bills fit just nicely in the vending machines at work. Dollar coins do not.
    They thought that the SBA dollars didn't work because they were hard to tell apart from quarters.
    So they made the next ones gold colored.
    Now they think that those didn't do well because who in the world is Sacagawea? I mean, Pocahontas, maybe.
    So they think that the presidential ones will do better, but do you still get all excited about the fifty state quarters? I don't. So why would anyone want the inconvenience of a dollar coin just so they could look at a president?

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  4. I won't use the $1 coin because I hate carrying change. I will probably collect them though because I think they look cool. Thanks for stopping by MyMoneyForest!

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  5. I only carry big bills (20'2 and 100's) I dont mess with the small denominations. It weighs me down.

    I have a suggestion for the US mint.I propose they produce these dollar coins out of pure gold. Then I would buy them, collect them, melt them down ...well you get the idea.

    Peace out

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  6. In Canada we have two higher denominational coins that replaced the $1.00 and $2.00 bill.

    Somedays we walk around with heavy pockets of $50.00 coins. It's terrible but we got used to it since we no longer have circulating paper money notes in those lower denominations. The sad news is that the Royal Canadian Mint has been pondering the idea of releasing a $5.00 coin.

    Is the US Federal Reserve going to replace the $1 dollar banknote since they now introduced the coin? Isn't the American $1 banknote of extreme historical significance for Americans and America?

    Good luck America!

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