So I was walking to the bank today to cash some rolls of change and I was reminded of how the United States Federal Bureau of Engraving and Printing occasionally tries to convert the US $1 bill to a $1 coin. In my lifetime alone, they have tried twice with the Sacagawea gold dollar and the Presidential line of gold dollars, and I know in the past they have tried at least 1 silver dollar. All of them failed to catch on and enter circulation as common currency.
Before I get into what I believe to be the main problem, allow me to explain why "The Fed" would want to replace the $1 bill with a $1 coin. As I'm sure you can imagine, the average life of paper currency is SIGNIFICANTLY shorter than the average life of coins. It's rather uncommon to find a $10 bill from 1990, but it is incredibly common to find a dime from 1970. The average life of a $1 bill is something like 3-5 years due to heavy circulation, but I have absolutely no trouble finding pennies from the 1960s for my collection. Of the paper money, $1 bills have shortest life span since they are used for all the small every-day purchases. If The Fed could get the United States on a $1 coin instead of a $1 bill, it would significantly reduce the amount of resources they have to put into replacing $1 currency denominations. I've been to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington DC, something like half of the bills they print are replacement $1 notes. If however the US was on a $1 coin, would be able to put like 1/4 of the resources into minting replacement coins due to the significantly longer lifespan, and put the other 3/4 of dollar replacement resources to other programs the government is responsible for.
OK, so now you know why the government wants to use coins for $1 denominations, so why haven't they ever caught on. Well the answer is REALLY simple; it's because they make them out of "precious metals." The Susan B. Anthony $1 coin and presidential line of $1 coins were all made of "gold" and all the silver dollars were made of silver. Now while the silver dollars were primarily made of silver to my knowledge (as were quarters and dimes), the "gold dollars" had very little gold in them. The contents of the presidential dollars were primarily made of copper and had a little bit of gold on the surface to give them the gold look, similar to modern pennies, dimes, and quarters. The melt value of $1 presidential coins (the raw value of the metals that made up the coins) is something like 15 cents. Similarly, the Sacagawea $1 coin was also "gold" but was made primarily of copper. Because of this "gold marketing," people horded the coins. I know I have a little hoard of Sacagawea and Presidential dollar coins because "gold coins." There are other reasons why the other dollar coins never caught on (size primarily in terms of the Susan B. Anthony dollar being to small and similar in size to the quarter and Eisenhower dollar being far to large and cumbersome).
Now here's my idea for how to make $1 coins catch on in the united states; make them a little larger than a quarter and visually out of copper. If the fed made a $1 coin that was 5-10% larger in diameter than a quarter, it wouldn't be cumbersome and would be comparable to the size differences between current coins (dimes to pennies, pennies to nickles, and nickles to quarters). Also if they had the orange look of copper, no one would think "I need to hoard this because it's super valuable" because 1 cent pennies are also copper. When people hear "gold" or "silver," they jump to "I need to hold on to this for when it's worth more." When people hear copper, they think "like a penny, this isn't worth more than face value, I should probably use this." While citizens would probably be slow to adopt at first, they would probably adopt after a couple years of push because no one would be hoarding them.
Well, this has been catholiccontriversy, signing off, and may god bless you.
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