2007 Sacagawea

I picked up two more rolls of the Washington Dollars today at the bank, and have been having a good time spending them.

The clerks really take a good look at the dollars when I hand them over, but nobody has shown surprise, or questioned what they are.

And, for the kazillionth time, this dollar, or the previous two, will not circulate until the paper dollar is eliminated. And, the paper dollar isn't being eliminated for political reasons, meaning it will be the same old, same old for years to come.

The hope is that all those people that ran to the bank for rolls in the hope that they would find a smooth edge error coin will spend those coins.

2001 sac's are in circulation also. I pick up a roll each week to use in the machines at work and would get about 3 2001 coins per roll of 25.

The government can always send those stockpiled Sac & Pres. coins to the countries we don't like as our foreign aid payment. Kind of like a dissatisfied customer leaving a 100 Lincolns on the table for a tip. At least they would get some use. The cost of minting, stock piling then melting them would drive any other business broke. Name one government agency that you feel you are getting your bang for your buck?

thats a good point, if they did just stop making paper money then we would have no other option

old habits are very hard to break, seems like the general public dont really want to break the habit of paper money either, most people who dont know much about coins seem to forget that there are dollar coins, which I'm sure doesn't help get the coins out there.

I have also been looking for information on this. I'm going to be interested if the 2007 Sacs will be released for circulation, since they havn't released any for circulation in 5 years. But now they are going to have to produce a lot more to meet the requirement that they are 1/3 of total dollars. I don't see why they would not release them, if they have to produce so many of them.

Another interesting aspect to the dollar coin demand - starting this year the Post office is going to be removing stamp machines. That has been the biggest user of the dollar coin. The government started using stamp machines to give change in dollar coins as a way to force use of the dollar coin in the late 90's. Demand picked up so much that they had to mint additional SBA dollars in 1999 before the Sac came out in 2000. Then minted so many in 2000 and 2001 that the supply was so high, they didn't have to make or release any for the next 5 years.

So now, it looks like for the next few years the goverment is going to be reducing the demand for dollar coins, as well as producing a lot more Sacs then they have in the past 5 years.

I think the 25 year rule about changing designs applies to the mint director. The mint director can change the desing of coins at his/her discretion, but only if the design has been in circulation for 25 years, with out approval from Congress.

Congress can enact legislation to change designs when ever they want.

Remember that according to law 1/3 of the dollars produced are supposed to be sacagaweas.

Interesting stats I just found at usmint.gov:
http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_min...tion_figures

Sacagawea production:
2005 - 5 million
2006 - 7.7 million

January 2007 through March 2007
Production of Washington dollars: 454.88 Million
Production of Sacagawea dollars: 7.56 Million

They're only at 3% of the required number.

If this production rate of the Presidential dollar coins cointinues through the year, then they are going to produce 1.8 billion pres dollars.

That would then require them to produce 900 million Sacagawea dollars.

That would be a yearly production of 2.7 BILLION dollar coins. Thats equivilent to the number of quarters or dimes or nickles they produced in 2006.

What was congress thinking....?

The dollar needs to be removed for $1 coins. There is not way $1 coins will circulated with paper $1. I try to use coins whenever possible. But, I think they will go back to bank right after.