The real reason for your proposed dollar coin

[Pottapaug1938]

We can't get rid of the nickel without also getting rid of the quarter, which would leave us with dimes, and maybe half dollars; so our best course of action is to change the composition of the nickel to one to one which can lower the cost of production below the face value of each coin. Canada did it so we can do; and vending machine companies and their lobbyists can pull up their Big Boy/Girl Pants and retool their machines to accept the new nickels. While we're at it, we also need to adopt the Canadian system of rounding, so that individual prices do not change, and the only rounding takes place in CASH transactions, with a maximum fluctuation of two cents either way..

[AnOwlCalledSage]

We can't get rid of the nickel without also getting rid of the quarter, which would leave us with dimes, and maybe half dollars; so our best course of action is to change the composition of the nickel to one to one which can lower the cost of production below the face value of each coin. Canada did it so we can do; and vending machine companies and their lobbyists can pull up their Big Boy/Girl Pants and retool their machines to accept the new nickels. While we're at it, we also need to adopt the Canadian system of rounding, so that individual prices do not change, and the only rounding takes place in CASH transactions, with a maximum fluctuation of two cents either way..

I did a bit of research yesterday, but didn't post it because I didn't think anyone else would be interested. How wrong I was, so I'll post it anyway!

According to what I can find, the US uses copper-plated zinc and nickel-plated copper. Since 1992, the UK has used copper-plated steel. Our "silver" coins are nickel-plated steel. Zinc's current commodity price is 6 times that of steel and nickel is 32 times more expensive.

[Burnaby49]

Same with Canada. Both our nickels and quarters are over 90% steel making them much cheaper to mint than their American equivalents.