Eisenhower Dollars--Why?

Well said Earle....I fondly remember those days as kid growing up in America.

I remember my great-grandmother given me Ike dollars for my birthday and Christmas.

And it look good....

Excited? Yes. The excitement was as much about person and symbolism being represented.

I do not remember too many, if any, people I knew thinking the new Eisenhower "silver dollars" were actual silver. Pm was not the excitement. Why do I mention this?

I saw an interview online of an APMEX representative when PMs were so high. The conversation somehow went to the presidential "gold dollars," and you could tell the interviewer was thinking the APMEX guy meant these were actually gold. The interviewer, in context of desiring gold, said something to the effect of needing to go to the bank to get some.

Yeah, I know... hard for some of us older people to believe. But remember what I said earlier about the dumbing down of critical reasoning skills? Anyway...

The Eisenhower dollar Era (capitalized it for jbuck!) was a day when most school kids could tell you what the designs on coins and bills were. I remember the teacher using these designs as tangible teaching aids in history class when studying the presidents and American history. Well, OK. She used pictures of 10s 20s, 50s, and 100s. But I remember her even mentioning and showing pics of the 500s and 1000s while saying we likely would never see one because they were not used much in the general public. Remember that 5.00 still bought something back then.

Kids nowadays have no clue what the designs are since these icons of American history have been relegated to trashpile by the mis-education/reprogramming department. So again, people of the Eisenhower dollar Era were excited about the cooins from having much more of a connection to what these Eisenhower dollars represented. The people of the day knew who he was, his truly American contributions to society, and again, paired with the recently accomplished greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century, the excitement was unavoidable.

No, there were no parades (that I remember anyway LOL!), but I remember family and friends showing them around to see if people had yet seen and held one. Our banks always had rolls of them for the asking. They were fun, like nowadays, to leave for tips, etc.

THEN... the announcement of actual silver, "silver dollars" being made for collectors came out. Yes, that was exciting for numismatists.

I think the Ikes also helped promote the sales of more proof sets - at least in my family. My grandfather, who got me into the hobby, started ordering 5 clad sets a year when previously he had not been interested in proofs at all. But, sadly his experience in the 1st Great Depression meant he did not want to put out the money for the silver ones when they came out...until the silver, three-piece bicentennial sets were announced! He ordered one for each of us. The lure of the special designs was just too strong not to own them in PM.

The excitement of the clad the bicentennials is obvious by looking at how many people stashed away rolls and kept every one they saw. The mint knew this would happen, which was likely one of the contributing factors to them deciding to not make the 1975 coinage. I remember it being said that for the bicentennial, they wanted these coins to be all over the place. But people still hoarded them. You can eBay-find rolls of them for sale at a small premium to this day.

The waning numbers minted in 1973 makes me wonder if the government was not thinking of quitting the series since the dollars were not circulating like bills. I am not even sure the government actually expected the Ikes to become a mainstay in daily commerce. Surely they knew dollar coins had never circulated well. I have also wondered if need for something special for the 200th birthday celebration was not an aid towards the positive side of the keeping of the coins? I am sure the added profits from making bicentennial coinage for two whole years could also have been used for an argument of not stopping the series.

SBA excitement? Actually, yes, I remember it. Despite the aforementioned concept of the new coin being a political move, the novelty of seeing something new again was still special. The advantage of being smaller and lighter than a half, yet with some buying power, might just work.

Again, I wonder if the design of the Presidential dollar might not have taken off back then? The masses of the time saw neither Liberty, a president (or a founding father) on the SBA. Putting someone besides a president, founding father, or effigy of Liberty on a coin was mostly perceived as lowering the importance of the latter three.

Historic figures like Edison, etc. were great, but not on the level of what coinage was deemed as being made to honor.

... unless people just "liked" the design. The Buffalo nickel comes to mind - fickle humans!

I am not trying to be negative by any means, but what you said is obvious and I do not see its value. I may be misunderstanding, but, to me, an equivalent statement would be that if cows only started to produce Pepsi, the people would learn to do without milk.

The fact of the matter is that people would still miss milk until a new generation of people never having known milk came on the scene. That new generation would be content and wonder why the old timers complained when their preference was taken away by making statements such as, "what's the big deal?" That's b/c that new generation never experienced a chocolate malt!

I truly believe government officials issuing the SBAs were well aware US history proved We The People never did want dollar coins and preferred the convenience of bills. So the SBAs were introduced as an experiment to see if the smaller format would bring about acceptability. After all, the larger Walkers had been used b/c in their day it only took one to get through a day of buying lunch etc.

Inflation killed the use of half dollars since it took more than half to buy what Walkers used to cover: enter the pocket weight problem. So by making the new dollar just a bit larger than THE standard spent coin of the day - the quarter - maybe people would see using the smaller dollar as an advantage (remember when the SBA came out, a dollar still had some buying power). If people started to use the coins, then it might be possible to phase out the dollar bill.

Now I need to go get one of those Shamrock Shakes!

I think that there is also a natural mental convenience of "everything under $1 is a coin", and the fact that cash register change drawers have only so many compartments has a lot to do with it too. The "convenience" concept doesn't work with me because over the course of history, there were inflationary factors at work and with silver coinage the coins had to be a certain size making them less convenient for general commerce. The smaller size makes them more convenient now but with no driving need to use them instead of bills, and lesser accommodations to support them, they remain unnecessary.

One could make the case that, as is often noted, the SBAs were too similar to quarters for the test to be truly effective. If only SBAs had a smooth edge instead of reeded, and were a golden color. Oh wait...

"We the people" were never given a chance to accept or reject the Ike or the SBA. They were simply never issued by the banks. If they were then some people would have returned them and asked for quarters or $5 bills but most people simply never had a choice.

It's ironic the vending industry is what killed the half dollar. And then lack of a coin of real value is what's killing them now. Back in the late-'60's banks were always giving me half dollars and I was always handing them back and asking for quarters because machines didn't take half dollars.

If machines had taken Ikes (think Vegas) then it would have gotten much more circulation and if the banks had just issued the SBA people would have loved it and it would have made the green back dollar obsolete in a few years.

The FED and the banks are on the same page but the mint reads from Congress' playbook. ...Better stop here.