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Americans just don't like dollar coins
A $1 coin
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TEXT OF STORY
Renita Jablonski: All right, do you have everything you need for the day... like, your dollar coins? That's what I thought. The U.S. mint is launching yet another advertising campaign to get people to start using dollar coins. This time, there's a new message. Marketplace's Jeremy Hobson reports.
Commercial: She's gone . . . she's not there!
Jeremy Hobson: The latest ad from the U.S. Mint starts off with Lady Liberty walking through New York City to buy a hot dog with $2 coins:
Commercial: They last for decades, are 100 percent recyclable, and using them now could save our country billions of dollars.
The environmental plea is the Mint's latest attempt to hawk the dollar coin to consumers. But economist Robert Whaples at Wake Forest University says regardless of the message, Americans just prefer bills.
Robert Whaples: The public right now is voting with their pocket book, and saying there are these two things in circulation, we like this other one better. We're using it. We're showing you that we like it better by using it.
Whaples says the only way to get people to switch to coins is by following in the footsteps of the Europeans and getting rid of the notes altogether.
New faces on the coins won't cut it, he says. After all, if the faces of Washington and Jefferson couldn't convince the public, what makes the Mint think William Henry Harrison and James K. Polk will?
In New York, I'm Jeremy Hobson for Marketplace.
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I don't know why you guys are complaining soo much about using a dollar coin instead of paper bills. look at about 90% of the worlds population they all use coins. Hek you don't see canadians running around talking about how they hated it when the $2 dollar coin came into circulation. I think that most americans need to suck it up its gonna happen, in time you might even see coins replace all the bills.
I wonder how much energy it takes to make a bill? The $1 bill is the most commonly replaced bill - and the most expensive to produce in terms of its value. The $1 coin has a much longer circulation period.
Whereas coins demand mining and metals (which are recyclable), the bill is made from cotton and heavily industrialized agriculture. Both have negative environmental impacts.
I prefer to spend dollar coins, although I have to ration them when I have just a few.
I've used the Dollar Coin exclusively since 2000 and, after spending some 18,000 of them, see gradual acceptance.
The low point was in 2005 when the mint forced the coin to be purchased at a rediculous premium. It was still widely belived the coin was heavy when it's actually much lighter than 4 quarters. I hit bottom when a blind clerk recited the myth that it is too close in size to the quarter, although it only fills the gap in the dime, penny, nickle, quarter, half dollar stacked cone.
We've turned the corner. The presidential coin definitely helped, not necessarly because of its design and variety, but also because there are now 3 completely different types in circulation with the SB and Sacagawea looking rare.
I spend a blend of the three types as well as $5 bills to prevent getting dollar bills back in change. I keep about 15 dollar coins in my left pocket. The right is for other change.
Obstacles are still that clerks are reluctant to give them in change for fear of their customer's reaction although they never tried. I get good reactions to my spending them. Another barrier is vending machines that still let the coin in, but keep it. For airport security, I dump them in my shoe I place on the belt. They also like to fall out of certain types of dress pants when you sit in a car. I think the more valuable Euro coins helped designers improve in that area.
It's funny that everyone is talking about the dollar coin being too small...i would think the opposite. They're big enough to be annoying to have in your pocket. I think most people are generally resistant to carrying anything heavier/bigger than a quarter in their pocket. Maybe if teh dollar coins were made a smaller, easier to manage size, people would carry them around and actually use them.
It's a myth that there isn't a slot in the cash drawer for dollar coins. Take a peak in the drawer next time the cashier opens the register (don't be too aggressive about it, though--no sense making a poor cashier scared you're about to jump over the counter and steal the cash from the drawer!). I can almost guarantee you'll see a big fat empty bin next to the quarters. Do you know what it's for? The United States' other unloved coin, the half-dollar. The half dollar fell out of circulation in the late 1960s, and pretty much ever since then there's been an unused slot in most cash drawers. Some places have found other uses for this bin, but the places where I recently spent some half-dollar coins at, the cashier just popped them into the empty bin without hassle.
Metal coins are a throwback to the days when we used precious metals as money. Paper money is much lighter and easier to transport than coins. The bean counters at the mint who think that coins save the taxpayers money ignore all of the energy spent lugging all that metal around and the time spent counting coins. We should get move towards getting rid of coins altogether.
Why should people use dollar coins when dollar bills are still being printed and are more common? Personally I'd prefer to use the coins, but anywhere you go you'll still get your change in bills. If the government is serious about switching people over to coins, they should just stop printing the bills.
A big reason coins aren't a big hit and being used in place of paper dollars is because businesses don't have a slot in the cash register for them. To add to this, remember when the gold dollars came out a few years back? Have you seen them used regularly? Everyone got them and tucked em' away. I know I have several I've saved. Possibly new dollars could be as big as the old half dollars and be made from nickel. Again where will they fit in the cash registers?..
Julie Day
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