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NEW $5 Bill

Raid said:
Not only is a coin cheaper to produce, it can last in circulation much longer than a paper bill can.
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Actually, after looking it up, the cost of production for a dollar coin is 9 cents, however, it has much more longevity (standard 1 dollar bill doesn't last very long), so that's where the savings come in.

Nonetheless, I find coins impractical. I barely tolerate cash as it is. If the government is going to force me to carry around a dollar coin, you can bet your house I'm going to only carry $5 notes and above.
 
I can't stand different sized notes in different countries. But i do like the variety in color.
 
Cool, but none of it will matter when the dollar disappears and gets replaced by the Amero...
 
I spent four years in Canada and never got used to dollar/two dollar coins. If you wanted to have a handful of dollars for lunch, say, you'd have to carry around several jangling, relatively heavy objects in your pocket. Even worse would be trying to figure out what to do with the stack of actually valuable coins produced by breaking bills.

At least in the 'States I can throw them in a jar and forget about them with good conscience. :D
 
CalBoy said:
Given that the $1 note doesn't use as many inks and security technologies, it likely costs less, but 6.2 cents is fine by me. Link

Actually, a quarter weighs 5.6 grams, while a dollar bill weighs 1 gram. If you had a roll of 20, that would add up to half a pound. And for what?
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As other people have pointed out, per bill is cheaper than per coin, but the coin lasts much longer. I've found coins in circulation from before WWII. So let's say a coin lasts 50 years. At 24¢ (metal costs are 6.8¢ per dollar, but I'm including a - perhaps inflated - manufacturing cost) per $1 coin that lasts 50 years, 33.3 $1 bills would need to be printed. At 6.2¢ per bill, that costs $2.06.7 over the lifetime of the coin, or 8.6x as much.

Also, I often hear this, "If I had a roll of dollar coins in my pocket it'd be too heavy," or, "I don't want tons of change in my pocket." Well, how many $1 bills do you normally carry around? Most people, I would guess, have 5 or less. 5 $1 coins usually will weigh less than your keychain, so really, just suck it up.
 
astrostu said:
As other people have pointed out, per bill is cheaper than per coin, but the coin lasts much longer.
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Yes, I deferred to this in a previous post:
CalBoy said:
Actually, after looking it up, the cost of production for a dollar coin is 9 cents, however, it has much more longevity (standard 1 dollar bill doesn't last very long), so that's where the savings come in.
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Also, I often hear this, "If I had a roll of dollar coins in my pocket it'd be too heavy," or, "I don't want tons of change in my pocket." Well, how many $1 bills do you normally carry around? Most people, I would guess, have 5 or less. 5 $1 coins usually will weigh less than your keychain, so really, just suck it up.
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Coins are unnecessarily heavy. At 5.6 times the weight, 5 dollars in coins can be quite cumbersome (it would be 28 grams-or one ounce) in your pocket. I don't want heavy things in my pocket. I try to buy a thinner phone, keep less in my wallet, and rarely ever carry coins with me (goes in my car if I get change most of the time).

Why on earth would I want to keep something 5.6 times heavier in my pocket that has the same purchasing power?
 
astrostu said:
As other people have pointed out, per bill is cheaper than per coin, but the coin lasts much longer. I've found coins in circulation from before WWII. So let's say a coin lasts 50 years. At 24¢ (metal costs are 6.8¢ per dollar, but I'm including a - perhaps inflated - manufacturing cost) per $1 coin that lasts 50 years, 33.3 $1 bills would need to be printed. At 6.2¢ per bill, that costs $2.06.7 over the lifetime of the coin, or 8.6x as much.

Also, I often hear this, "If I had a roll of dollar coins in my pocket it'd be too heavy," or, "I don't want tons of change in my pocket." Well, how many $1 bills do you normally carry around? Most people, I would guess, have 5 or less. 5 $1 coins usually will weigh less than your keychain, so really, just suck it up.
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umm that is not a good argument. Coins do not really last that long.

Most of them are pulled out after 20 years at most. I do not see quarters before 1990 that often. Most have been pulled out just because of wear and tear. Dollar coin would be need to be replaced even faster.

It kind of like I do not see dollar bills more than 2-3 years old very often but in my wallet right now I have a dollar bill from 1999. It happens.

I would say a dollar coin would have maybe a 10 year life which is still over 5 times better than the current life.

I just would rather not carry it because I hate having change on me. I really only carry bills then though the change in a jar minus the quarters that I pull out and set aside for laundry.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
umm that is not a good argument. Coins do not really last that long.

Most of them are pulled out after 20 years at most. I do not see quarters before 1990 that often. Most have been pulled out just because of wear and tear. Dollar coin would be need to be replaced even faster.

It kind of like I do not see dollar bills more than 2-3 years old very often but in my wallet right now I have a dollar bill from 1999. It happens.
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$1 bills have a half-life of 14-18 months. However, a series generally doesn't get into circulation up to a few years after it is introduced (for example, I'm just starting to see series 2006 $1 bills now).

Quarters are a different issue, as are dimes. With the quarters, the Mint has produced so many more quarters over the last 10 years because of the Statehood Quarter Program® that the old-style ones are almost drowning in the new spaghetti-hairs. But both quarters and dimes prior to 1965 you won't find in circulation because they have silver.

Nickels and cents, however, are more common in the older dates. I'm not saying that there are majority that circulate that long, but a very significant percentage can be found that are several decades old. I don't have numbers because I don't keep track, but when I've searched stacks of bills over the last year or two, I've only once found one that was older than 10 years, out of well over 1000 bills (so less than 0.1%).

Below are the results of searching a regular box of a denomination from the bank that I did in early 2007:


Quarters
pre-1965: 0 (0%)
1965-69: 66 (3.3%)
1970-79: 101 (5.0%) with 10 from 1976
1980-89: 251 (12.4%)
1990-99: 523 (25.8%)
2000-06: 1089 (53.6%)

Breakdown by state quarter years:
1999 - 98
2000 - 142
2001 - 99
2002 - 95
2003 - 64
2004 - 65
2005 - 274
2006 - 350


Dimes
1965-69: 67 (2.7%)
1970-79: 134 (5.3%)
1980-89: 267 (10.7%)
1990-99: 688 (27.5%)
2000-06: 1349 (53.9%)


Nickels
1930s: 1
1940s: 4
1950s: 12
1960s: 70
1970s: 183
1980s: 318
1990s: 667
2000s: 740


Cents
1940-1949: 4 (0.1%)
1950-1959: 16 (0.3%)
1960-1969: 144 (2.8%)
1970-1979: 483 (9.4%)
1980-1989: 941 (18.4%)
1990-1999: 1571 (30.7%)
2000-2006: 1947 (38.0%)
 
I think the real reason why there are so many coins from as of late is not the states but more older coins just wear out. Start looking at them and you start showing there life.

The dollar coin life might be 7 years or so. That is till a hell of a long longer than the bill.
 
Spievy said:
Exactly... Also another reason for Coin dollars.
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It's not so easy to just "bleach" a note. You'd have to be able to reproduce the watermarks and strip, which are imbedded between the fibers of the cotton.

It's a very complex process; you certainly can't create counterfeit bills with some bleach and green ink.
 
As a Canadian, I would prefer if the loonie and toonie were replaced by a bill. Coins can be very annoying when you have $8 or $9 of change in your pocket.
 
I, for one, would love it if the dollar bill was replaced by a dollar coin. Coins are more efficient to produce, and they don't get spit out by vending machines.

The only problem with coins is really carrying them around (mostly for men, as women have a purses which can fit just about everything :p), however, I've already taken this into consideration: the added weight of dollar coins can easily be offset by ridding the world of pennies, which I'm convinced have no purpose other than to annoy me.
 
CalBoy said:
It's not so easy to just "bleach" a note. You'd have to be able to reproduce the watermarks and strip, which are imbedded between the fibers of the cotton.

It's a very complex process; you certainly can't create counterfeit bills with some bleach and green ink.
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True.. but it is still possible, maybe not every security measure but the bill might not raise a flag to the cashier that does not check every security feature. I have NEVER seen a cashier hold a bill up to the light to check for watermark. I have only seen cashiers use the pen test (if that).

BTW i am one of the few FOR Dollar coins. I prefer them.
 
I only find it annoying to carry around coins when I have an utter shatload of them and they weigh my pocket down so much that I just dump them in a little pocket in my messenger bag.

But honestly, I don't see how I could live without them. I think I'd find using bills as dollars ridiculous. Especially one dollar. I suppose it just seems natural to me that any denomination less than $5 should be in a tiny, can-go-anywhere form.

EricNau said:
... ridding the world of pennies, which I'm convinced have no purpose other than to annoy me.
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When I lived in China, I loved how there were never prices that were multiples of 0.01 or 0.05. The smallest denomination was a tenth. And even then, most things' prices were rounded to the nearest whole RMB (so instead of paying $139.99, you'd just pay $139, although occasionally you're run into an annoying $139.90, at which point you get the equivalent of a dime back instead of a penny, which doesn't solve much, but it's usually the former case of rounding to the nearest whole number).
 
CalBoy said:
I am a fan of this idea. I think braille is the way to go.
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Braille is useful, but remember that many blind and partially sighted people don't know braille. It's very hard to learn if you're someone who has gone blind later in life.

I'm not blind, but I find differently sized notes very useful - I can distinguish them by touch in my pocket, and it makes instantaneous visual identification much easier - I only have to see one end of the bill in the cashier's hand, and I know what note it is.

On a trip to the USA, I had to inspect the face of every bill before handing it over, (or accepting it as change) as they're all the same colour and size.
 
RedTomato said:
Braille is useful, but remember that many blind and partially sighted people don't know braille. It's very hard to learn if you're someone who has gone blind later in life.
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That's true, but I think Braille also adds a nice counter-counterfeit feature to the notes. So there's no reason not to have Braille in combo with something else.
On a trip to the USA, I had to inspect the face of every bill before handing it over, (or accepting it as change) as they're all the same colour and size.
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I think it's one of those things you adjust to or just know as an American. You recognize the faces, the pattern, whatever. But I can see how it can be confusing coming from a multi-sized and multi-colored currencies like the Sterling or the Loonie.
 
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