Another Dca Article On Cnbc

To be clear, my comment came from a position of bias. I do not collect notes.

They do make some "special event" sets, and of course the uncut sheets are NIFC..



Mine is also biased, I don't collect any of them and I only collect coins, pieces issued with the intent to be circulated as money. To me NIFC pieces are not coins.



I can agree you on with the half dollar. They had a problem with the dollar in that the law REQUIRED them to make them. Once you've made them what are you going to do with them? Guess they could have just stuck with roll set and bag sales.

Fine by me. The Dollar and Half Dollar are basically commemoratives these days anyway, they are just issued every year. Like Condor wrote, let them sell them separately, they do not belong in Mint or Proof sets.

The one problem for my theory of reverting to the original intent of Mint and proof sets as being representative of that years circulation coinage is that sometimes there might be a late run of coins after the traditional spring issue of the sets. This would require that the sets not be issued until late in the year when it is too late to decide to add a run of coins due to demand.

Getting back to the article, we would be fine with 4 coins, the dime, a reduced size half, a smaller dollar coin and a $2 coin. Plan on introducing a $5 coin down the road and eliminate the $1 and $2 notes now and the $5 note down the road. As far as notes, we can live with the $5, $10 and $20 now, anything legitimate beyond that is usually handled virtually or with plastic.

I agree with the changes discussed in the article. I think we should keep the 5 cent coin for at least the next few years. It would be too drastic a change to eliminate both the 1 cent and 5 cent coins at the same time. I would also be in favor of a bimetal $2 coin. It could have circulating commemmorative designs, like they do in other countries. The half dollar should be smaller, a different metal, or discontinued. And while they are at it, maybe change the designs of ALL circulating coins. Just my 2 cents worth.

Dollar coins circulate heavily within transit systems, at least here in the Los Angeles area. The ticket machines at the light rail / subway stations both accept and dispense them and the buses accept them. Then, at the end of each day, the dollar coins from the buses are loaded back into the ticket machines and the cycle continues. FYI the golden dollars wear very poorly compared to the SBA dollars. I have found golden dollars that have been worn completely smooth from use but the SBA composition seems to be much more durable and I seldom see any wear on the SBAs.

That is true. I just found a 2011 NA dollar at the car wash (in the reject slot since it only takes quarters). Just when I thought they could not look any worse, it was the most horrible looking dollar coin I have ever seen.

That being said, it still looked better than the average one dollar bill I get around here.

For years I hated the copper-nickel clad coinage and often wondered why they just didn't use a straight alloy instead of constructing a 3 piece metal sandwich. Now, 50+ years after they started using it I have become to understand the genius behind the madness. It tuns out that the US Clad coinage is one of the most durable and cost effective ever devised. While coins do not circulate nearly as much as they did before Clad was devised the wear on the most used coins of the type (quarter and dimes) is nowhere near as bad as similarly used silver coinage.

The biggest issue these days is size and shape, that is what killed the SBA. The Dollar Coin is about the right size but too close to the quarter.
There is no way to shrink the dime to match its relative value to the current dollar coin.
The quarter is too big for it's value even though it is 2.5 times the weight of the dime.

The SBA got us off the relative size to value standard left over from when major coinage was of precious metals. It might have succeeded staying clad if they were able to flatten the edges somehow. Otherwise they could have used the same 75/25 copper-nickel composition as the Nickel and used a flat sided shape.

Without a total re-imagining of the US coinage system we are going to be having these issues until coins just go away altogether. You just have to wonder if they will go away before all currency does or not. It is a matter of when, not if.

A solid coppernickel alloy would have given the same wear results without the expense and trouble of trying to create the clad strip. One thing they were striving for was anti-counterfeiting. The coppernickel clad construction was thought to be too difficult for counterfeiters to make. At the time they used explosive bonding to "weld" the coppernickel and copper ingots together so they could roll them out to make the strip. It was thought that counterfeiters would not be able to accomplish this technique.