Dollar Coins Unpopular?

Went to the Chicago International show this past weekend and took the tollroad. Toll was $1.50 and it was very convenient using dollar coins and quarters. Also didn't have to worry about the wind blowing away dollar bills or quarters falling out of folded dollars. I suspect a lot of people are using them because I didn't get one comment and everyone seemed to recognize them instantly. (Of course Chicago is also one of the cities that has a major rapid transit setup that uses dollar coins for their fares.)

@jbuck, all it really takes is availability. The other day I even had a kid (say . . . about 17?) look in my donation jar, spot the two Sacs I had in there, and go "OOH!! Can I give you quarters for those?" As I opened the canister to make the trade, he told me he likes dollar coins better in the lunch line at school because . . . something I never even thought about even though I deal with it every day . . . they don't stick together. He doesn't have to shuffle bills and hold up the line, because a coin is a coin is a coin and it would be nigh on impossible for one coin to be cleverly hiding stuck to another.

I think if the coins were more available, people would quickly find things to like about them. That's been my experience at work, at least.

People in this area recognize them but do not like to use them. They keep a couple shiny ones for novelty items, but other than that the people do not like them. I have had some people say that if they get them they ask the cashier for bills instead. I have seen more of the dollar coins in this area than where I used to live, but it has always been with a negative attitude of "look at these things I got in change." Except when Lincoln came out - then when people saw them, they wanted one to put away.

Now that is a good reason.

One of the problems is that, for several years, people were ordering boxes of dollar coins from the Mint (with free shipping) using credit cards (in order to get the reward points), then dumping the boxes at their banks, & paying their card bills that way. The banks mostly pay out the denominations the customer asks for ; it's businesses which normally request singles, & it doesn't seem many ever thought to ask for dollar coins instead of notes (maybe because they didn't want to change their cash-handling procedures, maybe because they didn't know the coins were available) ; the banks wound up shipping the coins back to the Federal Reserve banks, so the Fed wound up with vaults full of them. It's no surprise the coinage was suspended, or that the banks won't order them.

Meanwhile, I bought ten of them out of a cashier's drawer at the drugstore the other day. And when I asked for paper wrappers at one of those little grocery-store banks, the teller handed me ones sized for silver dollars!

I keep hearing/reading about "there's no space in the register". What a lame excuse. How hard would it be to snip a piece of cardboard and wedge it in one of the spaces? Add to that say that your business no longer deals with cents and that they always round down. Excuses....

For me, this could bring me to use $1 coins:

http://gizmodo.com/5979917/stores-c...-credit-card

Right now, I use my credit card for almost EVERYTHING, even a $1.06 drink at McDonalds. Currently, there's no downside: my wallet stays thin AND I make 2-3% back in "rewards." If stores all started charging me 4% to use a card, I'd switch to cash/coin, and I'd certainly be spending dollar coins regularly.

Certainly most stores would appreciate not having credit card fees (although I'm sure reported taxable income would go down a lot ).

I spend dollar coins regularly and I have never had anyone not accept them yet. Even most teenages know what they are. For the few who don't, they still accept them, and some even think they are 'cool'. I really believe that they would be accepted by most people if this was the only option.