The real reason for your proposed dollar coin

[Burnaby49]

Ours aren't quite as interesting:






We're so culturally touchy here that, as unbelievable as it sounds, the picture of the woman scientist initially caused a bit of a controversy and had to be changed. In the first rendering she had, to some eyes, an asian appearance. so focus groups and even some asian groups complained that it unfairly stereotyped them as geeks. So the lady in question was dumbed down to avoid making her look like any easily identifiable group.

To quote from the article linked below:

"Some believe that it presents a stereotype of Asians excelling in technology and/or the sciences. Others feel that an Asian should not be the only ethnicity represented on the banknotes. Other ethnicities should also be shown."

A few even said the yellow-brown colour of the $100 banknote reinforced the perception the woman was Asian, and "racialized" the note.

The bank immediately ordered the image redrawn, imposing what a spokesman called a "neutral ethnicity" for the woman scientist who, now stripped of her "Asian" features, appears on the circulating note. Her light features appear to be Caucasian.

Can't get too bland here in Canada!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/201 ... image.html

[Pottapaug1938]

.. and the fact that brown has been the dominant color on your $100 bills since at least 1937 is quite irrelevant, I'm sure.

[Number Six]

Was talking with currency expert Tom Denly (Denlys of Boston) who is quite impressed by the new $100 bill but concerned about the redesign and its effect on what is the reserve currency in much of the world; the last time they did a redesign in the early 1990s it created a lot of anxiety with people in countries who assume new currency means that the old ones become obsolete. By the way Pottapaug the Bay State show is in Marlborough tomorrow.

[Pottapaug1938]

Was talking with currency expert Tom Denly (Denlys of Boston) who is quite impressed by the new $100 bill but concerned about the redesign and its effect on what is the reserve currency in much of the world; the last time they did a redesign in the early 1990s it created a lot of anxiety with people in countries who assume new currency means that the old ones become obsolete. By the way Pottapaug the Bay State show is in Marlborough tomorrow.

I won't be able to go, Number Six; but thanks for the heads-up anyway. Some day, though, I will come and do some business with you.

[JamesVincent]

I can sum up the whole reason we will never switch completely to a $1 coin in one word: strippers.

[Pottapaug1938]

I can sum up the whole reason we will never switch completely to a $1 coin in one word: strippers.

Well, there IS talk about increasing production of $2 notes; so you can tip the same with fewer notes, and get the usual attention from the lass, times 2, when you tip her....

[Number Six]

Yeah, right, people think the $2 bill is bogus, like the ones I found thrown away in a dumpster a while ago when throwing my trash in there; or the Walmart employee who reported someone was trying to pass off "counterfeit" bills and had the customer arrested. I agree they should be mainstream and the dollar coins too but it ain't going to happen.

[Burnaby49]

Yeah, right, people think the $2 bill is bogus, like the ones I found thrown away in a dumpster a while ago when throwing my trash in there; or the Walmart employee who reported someone was trying to pass off "counterfeit" bills and had the customer arrested. I agree they should be mainstream and the dollar coins too but it ain't going to happen.

I've never understood the American aversion to the $2 bill (well, apart from the terrible portrait of Thomas Jefferson). I often end up with a wad of $1 bills when I'm visiting but I've only received a $2 in change once. A very useful denomination now gone in Canada as part of our government's relentless drive to make our wallets as heavy as anvils.

[notorial dissent]

Burnaby49, I can't say this is based on anything remotely scientific, and is quite frankly purely anecdotal and personal experience, but then the bright lights at Treasury, or whoever, ran all sorts of “scientific” studies and trials and such on the Saccy and the $2 before they dropped those leaden blimps on an unreceptive and uninterested public, that their “studies” had shown them would welcome these new innovations with open arms, so I think I'll take my anecdotal over their scientific mind farts.

Whether it is true or not, the $2 has always been associated specifically with race tracks and betting, something not guaranteed to endear you to much of the middle America that is still sweating the repeal of prohibition. My grandmother would have had six kinds of a fit if someone tried to offer her one, as it was irredeemably connected to sin an vice. Otherwise, they are dead out useless.

I hate carrying them as they get confused with $1's, and quite frankly most merchants will not take them here. I hated them when I was in retail, as there is not, and never has been a till drawer for them so you have to do something with them, that is an additional nuisance, and customers don’t want them back as change either. The same exists for the $1 coin on both counts.

For whatever reasons, both real and imagined, in the US American mind set paper currency has always been $1 $5 $10 $20 $50 $100, and most people seldom if ever see or handle anything larger than a $20. From the retail end a $50 or $100 is bad news, they are the most often counterfeited, at least in retail mind, and they usually devastate your till when you get one, since few people generally buy $49.99 worth of something. So again they are a retail annoyance, there is no slot for them, and they have to be specially handled. I would only take a $50 or $100 if I happened to know the customer, and the purchase was right at that amount. So not terribly popular with retail at all, in fact most of the places I know will not take anything over a $20 in cash, easier to turn down a sale than get taken, and most of them don’t have that kind of spare cash on hand.

Further, in the US American mind set, our coinage has almost always only been 1¢ 5¢ 10¢ 25¢ 50¢ and $1. Or, if you ask the current generation, they will answer 1¢ 5¢ 10¢ 25¢ as our current coinage. We have had episodes of half cents and 3¢ and centimes, but those were during our very early days when a penny would buy a good deal more than it will now, and they haven’t been around for a long time, I’m too lazy to go look in my coin books to see when they were last issued, but not any time recently. I still remember using the 50¢ a great deal as a child, particularly as at one point, my allowance was exactly 50¢, but they have pretty well disappeared in change due to changes in economics. The $1 was never very prevalent in actual change, I remember having to go specifically to the bank to get them as a child, and they have of course completely disappeared since then. And yes, I include the Saccys in that as well, as they are not really in circulation, because again, no one wants them. I hate getting them in change as they are simply impossible to distinguish from quarters, and more of the ones I currently have I have gotten in change as quarters and didn’t realize it until I was emptying my pockets. If I want 50¢ or $1 coins, I have to go to the main branch of my bank and specifically ask for them, and buy them in rolls, and even then I often have to ask in advance for them to have them in, as no one wants them, and particularly not businesses.

I blame the Mint and their PR minions for the state of both the $1 and 50¢ as the designs have been quite frankly awful and ill considered, and they went about their implementation with what can only be described as tax protester logic in that they started with the answer they wanted and worked backwards to justify it, and like their tax protester counterparts, failed and failed utterly and miserably. No one wanted the $2 bill or the $1 coin then, and no one wants them now, and nothing they have done before or since has changed that, or is likely to.

[Number Six]

Something in the design of our $2 bills does not inspire confidence. This bill I have run on ebay only has folds to affect its quality and value:





Like art work and it inspires confidence.

Another 1896 $2 "educational" bill that is not in great shape was at a flea market last weekend:

http://i.imgur.com/gGgMkAD.jpg

I'm not sure how the appearance of these old bills would be greeted in 2013, probably skepticism by all but those who know what these are as with $500 and $1000 bills that I have rarely bought and sold. At least the US has obsoleted so few of their notes, unlike many other countries.

[notorial dissent]

I really like the older bill, although it really looks more like stock certificate art than anything else, the more recent, '14, looks like it ought to be savings bond or something. I have to admit to a fondness for some of the pre-20th C bills, they were elaborate, and decorative, something the current ones aren't. I have to agree with you though, I hadn't thought about it, but the current $2 looks like play money or something, which is something I think has always bothered me about them. I have never been overly fond of that design.

[LaVidaRoja]

I also think part of the dis-favor of the $2 bill is that in addition to gambling, it was also traditionally used as payment for other illegal activities.

[Pottapaug1938]

Modern cash registers could easily accommodate a $2 bill; but that fifth slot usually holds wrapped coins, rubber bands, bill bands and the like. They could also accommodate 50 cent pieces; but again people are used to using that extra space for something else.

I believe that I know why 50 cent pieces are no longer used. Up through 1964, it was not unusual to see them in circulation; but then two things happened. One was that the JFK half came out, and the other was that the price of silver crept close to $1.29 per ounce, the point at which the silver in a coin was worth more than its face value.

Soon, people who could afford to speculate on such an increase did so; and I can remember kids at my junior high school, with wealthy parents, buying lunch in the cafeteria and then saving all silver coins received in change (this accelerated when clad coins came out in the fall of 1965). Half dollars began to disappear as well, both because of their silver content and because word began spreading that "half dollars will be 'worth money' someday."

People began actively seeking out, and hoarding, half dollar pieces -- even the 40% silver pieces from 1965-69 -- to the point that by the time I graduated from high school in 1969, it was unusual to see a half in circulation. People got used to not using halves; and when the first silverless halves appeared in 1971, people began turning their noses up at them.

[Burnaby49]

Canada has the same irrational isssue mentioned by Pottapaug1938. We have a 50 cent coin but, for no reason I understand, it is not in circulation. I'm a 64 year old Canadian who has lived here all my life and I've never had a 50 cent coin in change. Why not? Who knows? With the penny gone and the nickel an endangered species I'd think the half-dollar would be an obvious candidate to step up to bat but it's not happening.

The value of silver isn't an issue because silver stopped being used in coins in the 70's. Perhaps Pottapaug, who has a vastly greater knowledge of coinage than me, can throw out a theory or two.

[fortinbras]

With reference to coins & paper money not in circulation, I wonder how much influence (in keeping some of this out of circulation) can be attributed to the manufacturers of such electric devices as vending machines and cash registers, who tell the govt "We can't be bothered to outfit our ubiquitous machines to accept such-and-such denomination. If you put it into circulation, our machines will reject it or otherwise not handle it properly."

[Pottapaug1938]

Canada has the same irrational isssue mentioned by Pottapaug1938. We have a 50 cent coin but, for no reason I understand, it is not in circulation. I'm a 64 year old Canadian who has lived here all my life and I've never had a 50 cent coin in change. Why not? Who knows? With the penny gone and the nickel an endangered species I'd think the half-dollar would be an obvious candidate to step up to bat but it's not happening.

The value of silver isn't an issue because silver stopped being used in coins in the 70's. Perhaps Pottapaug, who has a vastly greater knowledge of coinage than me, can throw out a theory or two.

Well, the reason why YOUR 50 cent piece disappeared goes back to 1968, when the Royal Canadian Mint not only removed silver from the Canadian half dollar (and other coins) but also downsized it (as well as the dollar coin). The new half was very difficult to distinguish, in size, from the quarter. We had the same problem with the Anthony dollar and the quarter, but Canadians had it worse since the obverse designs of the quarter and half are essentially the same. I have about $5 in halves, in my stash of Canadian money; and when I spend them on your side of the border I will point out that I am giving them a half and not a quarter.

[Pottapaug1938]

With reference to coins & paper money not in circulation, I wonder how much influence (in keeping some of this out of circulation) can be attributed to the manufacturers of such electric devices as vending machines and cash registers, who tell the govt "We can't be bothered to outfit our ubiquitous machines to accept such-and-such denomination. If you put it into circulation, our machines will reject it or otherwise not handle it properly."

That's essentially why our dollar coin is not 11-sided, as was originally proposed (the idiotic 11-sided internal rim of the Anthony dollar was a "compromise". Vending machine companies whined endlessly about how difficult (read: expensive) to refit their machines to accept the new coins. Now, we hear the same argument regarding bimetallic coins (also heard are arguments like "those are alright for furriners, but we are Amurricans").

[AndyK]

Funny, though, how they were all able to adapt the equipment to accept $1 and $5 bills and, most recently, to accept credit cards.

???

[notorial dissent]

Not funny in the least. The bill readers have exactly one moving part, they don't have to be specifically manufactured to handle different coins, and they can be relatively easily reprogrammed to handle different bills, and are cheaper to deal with than the coin rigs. They can also be set as to how finicky they are about bill condition, from downright picky to OK as long as it reads like the right bill. Every time treasury monkeys around with the currency they have to be reprogrammed not to reject valid bills. They really hated the new $20's when they first came out, and they will probably hate the latest incarnation when they start showing up.

The coin rigs are a complicated, almost Rube Goldbergian contraption using physics to identify the various coins they will accept. The more coins the more complicated and cranky. Don't believe that, try dropping a Canadian nickel or quarter in one and see what happens. I got the a good number of the ones I have from the of the ones I have from the service tech who had to come out and unjam the ones at a place I worked and it was usually either a Canadian nickel or quarter, or sometimes a bus token.

[Burnaby49]

Not funny in the least. The bill readers have exactly one moving part, they don't have to be specifically manufactured to handle different coins, and they can be relatively easily reprogrammed to handle different bills, and are cheaper to deal with than the coin rigs. They can also be set as to how finicky they are about bill condition, from downright picky to OK as long as it reads like the right bill. Every time treasury monkeys around with the currency they have to be reprogrammed not to reject valid bills. They really hated the new $20's when they first came out, and they will probably hate the latest incarnation when they start showing up.

The coin rigs are a complicated, almost Rube Goldbergian contraption using physics to identify the various coins they will accept. The more coins the more complicated and cranky. Don't believe that, try dropping a Canadian nickel or quarter in one and see what happens. I got the a good number of the ones I have from the of the ones I have from the service tech who had to come out and unjam the ones at a place I worked and it was usually either a Canadian nickel or quarter, or sometimes a bus token.

Somehow the Canadian vending machine operators have adjusted them to work with the $2 and $1 coins. They complained about it but when they had no choice they managed to adapt.