$1 Coins Everywhere!

[slvrbck]

Probably not the right place for this post but I love nickels so figured I would put it here.

While reading an article related to the billions of dollars worth of one dollar coins that have been minted and stored away by the US I had one of those eureka ah ha moments. Now believe me, I do not expect the government to make smart decisions as much as the next guy, but something just doesnt seem right here. There have been wayyyyyyy too many of these coins minted to just be a fluke.

What if the TPTB are fully aware of coming inflation and are minting these coins ahead of time. These dollars will have similar purchasing power to the quarters we all carry and love. Instead of spending a dollar bill and getting 3 quarters back in change you would spend a 5 dollar bill and get back 4 one dollar coins. When this occurs it may happen at a similar time with phasing out the pennies and nickels altogether, my guess would be sooner than later.

No way to really capitalize on it or anything, just a preminition I guess. I dont know, it just really made cents to me.

[HoardCopperByTheTon]

I figure it this way. If you could legally produce a dollar for 10 cents.. how many would you produce? It certainly offsets those labor and production costs allocated to producing nickels and pennies.

[inflationhawk]

The idea of discontinuing the production of the $1 coin just doesn't make sense to me. It makes much more sense to discontinue the dollar bill and leave the dollar coin as the only alternative. There was no way the public was just going to accept a dollar coin when there was a paper dollar choice. It's much easier to keep a paper bill in your wallet than change in your pocket. Eliminate the choice and the dollar coin will be a success by force. It doesn't have to be an immediate cutover, they can just stop producing new $1 bills and take the tattered ones out of circulation over time. I believe this is the path we are on. They need to build up enough supply of dollar coins for it to succeed though; and we must be close by now! The penny's demise can't be far behind. The nickel will stay, just likely change composition. I just wish the dollar coins were a little more attractive. The strikes seem weak and the metal composition is not very flattering.

[mtalbot_ca]

If you talk about a cheap looking coin it was the loonie. At least it was made out of brass. They are rethinking the composition also to some sort of steel. Please be aware that in Canada, we had about only a one-year transition (in 1986) from paper to coin. People held on to their paper for awhile then they gave up with the flood of 1$. Soon thereafter the 2$ coin came about also.

Cheers,

[uthminsta]

The following article talks about them ACTUALLY considering doing away with the dollar bill. Do you think it'll actually happen, and that it'll save money like they're claiming, or that it'll end up costing more like the critics say? Of course, if we could use real money for our transactions, like silver and gold, this would be a moot point. But still... over a billion $1 prez coins stored in vaults, and now this article.

http://rt.com/usa/news/dollar-coin-bill-schweikert-809/

[tractorman]

The dollar used to be a great big bulky coin everyone was happy with. Why were they happy? It was a chunk of silver, real money, preferred over the paper note that was meant only to be redeemed for that silver. Personally, I don't really care if my dollar is made out of paper or some metal like steel (or anything other than silver ). My guess is the opposition to the coin version is more sentimental and would rather leave the "dollar" in your wallet with your 20s, and not in your pocket with the pennies.

[slvrbck]

How awesome would copper dollars be? A nice big chunk of copper, maybe .40-.50 cents worth in metal value w/ a $1 FV. I would polish em and spend em w/ pride.

[Cu Later]

I've been collecting pennies for years but its looking like it's time to start picking up some nickels as well

[adagirl]

I've been collecting pennies for years but its looking like it's time to start picking up some nickels as well

Right you are! Start stacking the Ni!

[Hawkeye]

How awesome would copper dollars be? A nice big chunk of copper, maybe .40-.50 cents worth in metal value w/ a $1 FV. I would polish em and spend em w/ pride.

Interesting. I would go for that; it would be a great coin. Of course, with inflation, .40-.50 in copper might be $4.00-$5.00 in a few years. I just wish they would stop hemming and hawing over it. If you want us to use the stupid dollar coins, then stop printing the dollar bill. But do one or the other. By the way, if they need someone to take a few million of those "extra" dollar coins off their hands, I'm their guy.

[Bartender]

I just had an interesting thought about the dollar coins...

I personally haven't been a fan of them, haven't used them, and only have a couple that I keep just for kicks and giggles. BUT, as I'm sure we've all read, - via Jim Rawles, Survivalblog, or wherever - in the event of a currency revaluation such as dropping a zero, coins would likely be left in at face value due to both the cost/burden of making billions of new coins as well as the assumption that most people only have a handful of coinage at any given time. So while we avid coin accumulators would be able to preserve a much larger amount of wealth, it would still seem to be somewhat tedious to spend our pennies and nickels into redemption due to sheer volume.
Sooo, what I was wondering was how viable/profitable it could be to hold a certain amount of the dollar coins (in addtion to our other collections, of course) for the same event? If we were to drop a zero it would seem plausible that dollar coins would also be left in (especially since they know almost no one uses them) and could be spent back in at face value without the hassle of the volume of pennies, nickels, etc.

Thoughts??

[ZenOps]

Nickels a hassle?

Pssh. One cubic meter of pure nickel back in 2007 was worth about $400,000. It would be heavy - but definitely compact.

Assuming in the next decade that one cubic meter of nickel will be worth a million, you probably would not want the dollar coins, you *want* the volume.

As a currency, the nickel is probably superior to a silver or gold. If you have to buy a bottle of water and an apple - are you going to pay for it with and ounce of silver and gold every day?

I'm working on my cubic meter of Canadian pure pre-1981 nickels. Interesting statistic - if every pure Canadian nickel made since 1922 to 1981 were given out in wages to China and India each day... There would be enough nickels to last for less than one day (2 billion "real" nickels approx)

Besides, the US dollar coin is 88.5% copper and 2% nickel, which makes it much more like a large penny.

[slvrbck]

IF we were to drop a zero and IF you were able to time it right it seems as though one could stand to make a significant "profit".

Maybe this is precisely what the gubermint is doing. Maybe they are minting these coins in mass volume now only to collect more (is it seigniorage) down the road, alot more!
Something is going on with these billions and billions of coins just sitting there. Common guys we're not dumb.

[NHsorter]

Yeah, maybe something is up that they are not telling us about. But.... don't forget that this is the government that we are talking about. They are completely capable of major screw up's. Who is to say that they honestly did not think that these really would catch on? A major miscalculation by the feds.... that is not a surprise to me. It's like the sun coming up.

[uthminsta]

Who is to say that they honestly did not think that these really would catch on?

I think they intended for them to catch on. They hoped the collectible nature of the series would generate enough widespread interest for them to be generally accepted... consider:
EXHIBIT A: a 21-year commemorative quarter program, with 106 designs. The first 10 years must have been successful enough to justify essentially starting it all over again.
EXHIBIT B: the commemorative nickel designs of 2004-2005. These must have been well enough accepted to cause them to continue thinking the formula was "more new designs equals success."
EXHIBIT C: four cent designs in 2009 and a new design in 2010. Proof that this logic was all they had, in my opinion.

Anyway, back to the original thought, they hoped people would accept them being pumped out, year after year, mostly because they were cool... then they would already be EVERYwhere, and people would have to start using them. They didn't make too many. The one piece of the puzzle that they haven't figured out though (or maybe they have, but haven't executed it yet) is that they MUST get rid of the dollar bill. Once they do, all those vaults full of billions of prez dollars will start being used.

[ZenOps]

I don't think its a conspiracy at all. They are simply waiting for sufficient volume of coins before they enter main circulation.

1 Billion $1 coins to 300 million people is not enough to make it a successful launch (3 coins per person) for a denomination as well circulated as $1. To put it in perspective - there should be about 150 or so nickels per person (and at the rate hoarders are snapping nickels up, that is probably too few)

Maybe a dozen or so per person would make a decent launch, which by my guess means that the US will have produced enough by *maybe* 2017, which is just about the time the Obama dollar should show up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidenti ... in_Program

So as a Canadian looking at this from outside the box, you peeps in the US simply do not have enough production capacity as is - to successfully launch the coin for several years at least. In Canada, when we launched our $1 loonie, we minted 205 million in the first year for circulation to 26 million people (about 8 coins per person) Canada has a surprisingly strong and hyper-efficient metal mint, the US is arguably much weaker (you put all of your metal manufacturing into metal guns and ammo) Personally - It would probably be easier for the US to just put a legal $1 marking on a bullet instead of a coin, lol.

There is no recordkeeping of how many $1 bills are in circulation - but several hundred billion would probably be a guesstimate.

[inflationhawk]

Agree, no conspiracy. The only way a dollar coin will catch on is if the dollar bill goes away. A sufficient supply of dollar coins has to exist for the dollar bill to feasibly be decommissioned. It's just a matter of time.

[mflugher]

Is anyone aware of a precident in money revaluation where they left the coins in tact and only revalued the bills? This seems fishy to me.

[ZenOps]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_peso#Nuevo_peso

They did try to revalue the coinage at 1/1000th in New pesos in 1993. But as always - a currency is what the "people" will accept as money, and they tended to accept coinage at the old value.

If you went through a currency zero chop that drastic, the *only* thing I would be accepting would be metal.

For the US, a large half dollar would be of more value than these presidential dollars. So - find yourself a silver half picker and taking his rejects would be better than loading up on US $1.

[mflugher]

I was aware of the nuevo peso trade, they did not leave the coinage in tact though, they printed new coins "nuevo pesos" and the old coins continued to circulate (at the new value) IE an old 500 peso coin was treated as 50 centavos. I actually visited mexico in 1994 during the switchover and I learned this firsthand.

So is anyone aware of a precident of a country Leaving the coinage in place and revaluing the larger denominations?

[Know Common Cents]

As a way to stimulate the economy and kickstart the use of $1 coins, banks, credit unions, etc., would be authorized by Presidential decree to sell $50 worth of $1 coins for $25. One of the conditions is that banks wouldn't take them back in quantities over $5 per transaction.

Cash for Clunkers required that one must have owned the vehicle for at least one year before being eligible for the cash subsidy. There should be some type of reasonable restriction as to who could take advantage of this. Perhaps a bar-coded strip that could be affixed to something. (No. I'm not an advocat of a national ID card!) Might as well really go nuts and give everyone the right to the $50 for $25 once per month for 2012.

Better and likely cheaper than a QE3 program that really doesn't benefit anyone except the banksters.

[HoardCopperByTheTon]

Is anyone aware of a precident in money revaluation where they left the coins in tact and only revalued the bills? This seems fishy to me.

I think they did that in Zimbabwe. I am a trillionaire there. Didn't they remonitize the coinage and folks were going to the dumps trying to recover it?