{"id":5057,"date":"2012-06-11T10:46:57","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T17:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/?p=5057"},"modified":"2012-06-11T02:24:49","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T09:24:49","slug":"the-much-maligned-sacajawia-dollar-coin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/11\/the-much-maligned-sacajawia-dollar-coin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Much Maligned Sacajawia Dollar Coin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Until last year, people could buy dollar coins with their credit cards<\/a> from the US Mint and have them delivered, with no shipping or service fees. People often used this “loophole” to rack up airline miles on their credit cards. The purpose of this crazy loss-leader by the US Mint was mostly to get people to use Sacajawia dollars!<\/p>\n

Here’s an online forum where people are bemoaning the loss of their beloved loophole<\/a>. And talking about how nobody likes the coin<\/strong>. For instance, “the cashier [at the supermarket] told us that nearly all of the $1 coins that make it into the cashier tills get rolled and sent back to the fed because most customers refuse them in change.” There’s a hundred more stories just like it.<\/p>\n

Funny.<\/p>\n

————————————————–<\/p>\n

I despise the coin because it is indistinguishable from a quarter when feeling for it in your pocket and under moderate to poor light. And the gold color fades over time, making it look even more like a quarter. Some folks have disagreed with me about the pocket test until I put them to the test. Every person changed their tune when I asked them to try the pocket test themselves.<\/p>\n

The US Mint continues to throw good money after bad. It bothers me at how stupid their efforts are and how they are doing it “for the people”. If they could get a dollar coin to stay in circulation, the rewards would be dramatic: dramatic savings in minting costs.<\/p>\n

A dollar bill costs about $0.10 to mint and lasts about 1 year
\nA dollar coin costs about $0.20 to mint and lasts about 30 years.
\nThe US mints about 20 million $1 bills<\/strong> every day, costing about $2 million per day, or $730 million\/year<\/strong>.
\nIf we switched to a dollar coin, the US would only need to mint about 666 million $1 coins<\/strong>, costing about $133 thousand per day, or $48 million\/year<\/strong><\/p>\n

Switching from bills to coins would save about $680 million dollars\/year, every year. Not bad for fixing one stupid problem.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But more than that, it is bad design<\/strong> and bad design hurts my soul<\/em><\/strong>. I want nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until last year, people could buy dollar coins with their credit cards from the US Mint and have them delivered, with no shipping or service fees. People often used this “loophole” to rack up airline miles on their credit cards. The purpose of this crazy loss-leader by the US Mint was mostly to get people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}