I don’t even like that we have $50 and $100 bills in general circulation. To pay for high end stuff, that’s fine but all too often I see them being used on sales totalling less than $20 making them a nuisance to me change-wise.

And if you’re gonna get radical with the coins. If you consider the purchasing power of the dollar when the US was still on the gold standard, we shouldn’t have any bills smaller than $20 and any coins less than a quarter-dollar. Change used to have purchasing power. The quarter of today is roughly the cent of yesterday. Cents, nickels, and dimes all pile up the way they do because individually they’re worthless. Only in aggregate do they have value, but even then, only at CoinStar-type operations. If you have $5 and $10 coins in production, few could afford to let them accumulate in any numbers allowing the coins to do what they’re supposed to…circulate. They don’t do that anymore as evidenced by their wear. Coins from the 1970s should be nearly worn-out and flat but they look like they were made only a few years ago. The ones from the 1980s and later tend to look barely used at all.

I too, am a $2 bill and half dollar coin supporter. I believe that all store self checkout machines SHOULD be equipt to accept and dispense $2 bills and halves as needed. I once talked to a self checkout company about changing the designs of their machines to do this, and the president of the company said it would take a million or two million dollars to entertain the idea. I think he thought I was some kind of big business owner. But anyway, I also believe that the half, and the $1 and $2 bills SHOULD be redesigned. I don’t care if it will cost small businesses and vendors. If they upgraded to take new $5 bills twice in the past decade or so, which circulates about as much as the $1 bill, so why not get the government to redesign the $1 and $2 bills, and get vendors to pull their machines apart to program in new $1 AND $2 bills so that people will use the $2 bill, and while the vendors are at it, they can add a half dollar tube to their machines as well. Same goes with self checkouts. I don’t care if $1 and $2 bills are rarely counterfeited, there were still orginally plans to redesign them during the 1996 series of redesigns, so why did they scrap those plans? I don’t understand why the Treasury says they do not redesign their currency for aesthetic reasons, and only for anti-counterfeiting, yet they redesigned so many of our coins. How often are “coins” counterfeited, compared to bills? And the counterfeiting of $1 and $2 bills IS on the rise, due to the fact that they are rarely checked for counterfeits.

My idea is, get rid of the cotton/linen paper we currently use in our paper money, and switch to polymer plastic. Polymer lasts up to four times longer than our current cotton/linen paper does, and a $1 bill lasts about 1 1/2 years, multiply that by four and you now have a $1 bill that lasts 6 years, or maybe even 7,8 or more years if the government got on the issue of getting a polymer $2 bill circulating, which would take some of the work load off the $1 bill. Thats long enough for those polymer $1 and $2 bills to last fromone redesign to another, and the polymer can be recycled, unlike cotton/linen which can only be landfilled. Sure it will not save as much money as the 30-40 year lasting $1 and $2 coins, but it would still be huge cost savings none the less.

Also, get rid of the dollar coins for general circulation. I used to be a dollar coin and $2 coin supporter, but since the government won’t get rid of $1 and $2 bills, they should just quit wasting tax dollars on minting billions of dollar coins to sit in vaults for 30+ years like with the SBA dollar coins. Bring back Eisenhower sized $1 coins for noveltiy gifts around the holidays, but not really for general circulation, although they should be made available at the banks and legal tender so if someone wanted to spend them for fun, they can. The government says “Dollar coins make money” Yeah, well, its making THEM money because people are hoarding them, but its costing US tax payers to mint those coins, so I say, either ditch the $1 bill, or ditch the dollar coin, but right now, I support the $1 bill if it gets a redesign, as a dollar coin would take the half’s place in the cash drawer and push the half’s circulation futher into oblivion. And yes, the $2 bill and the half DO have a slot in most regesters. There are five coin slots and five bill slots: COINS: 1c, 5c, 10c. 25c, 50c, and BILLS: $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, and $50s and $100s would go in the $20 slot under the $20s or under the till.

And one final thing that NEEDS to be done is to reissue the $500 and $1,000 bills and issue a $200 bill. The Euro currently has 200 and 500 Euro notes, and the 200 Euro is worth close to $500 $US and the 500 Euro is currently worth around $880 $US, which is pretty close to $1,000 $US, so the U.S. $500 bill would rival the 200 Euro, the U.S. $1,000 bill would rival the 500 Euro, and the U.S. $200 bill would just be there to help cut down on printing costs of $100 bills and for making change even easier, plus our U.S. currency systen works on a 1,2,5, system, so we should have a $200 bill, just as we have a $20 bil and a $2 bill, and, should the U.S. $5,000 and $10,000 bills ever be reissued, there should also be a $2,000 bill issued. (Actually, it would have been awesome if all large denominations of U.S. currency would have been reissued in the mid to late 1990s, and have had a $2,000 bill (and possibly the $200 bill) issued in the year 2000)

The reason for issuing larger denominations again, is inflation, $100 bought what $1,000 would buy today, back in 1969 when the $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills were last issued, and now, even with electronic methods of payment, these denominations are more practical than ever.

While I still have yet to see a 2009-D nickel, I would be hesitant to call it profiteering on the part of those who have gotten a few. The present value of these coins can only go down. I would, but I don’t, feel sorry for those who are overpaying for the coin now when by the end of this year, they should be readily available. Demand is low so new coins aren’t being issued at a high rate but they will get out.

I’ve said it before, but I’m glad I haven’t found all the 2009 issues yet. It’s been making searching through my change fun again for the first time in many years. There’s still a small possibility that no nickels dated 2010 will be produced for circulation (I figure proofs are all but a certainty regardless). That hasn’t happened since 1933 and an individual mint hasn’t gone without production since 1970 (for nickels at least). I would personally love to see that as it would give the Jefferson series some “character”. This is a good time to be collecting. Enjoy it while it lasts. I know I’ll miss it when it’s gone and everything’s back to “normal”.

That’s a great idea. Considering that post offices are in virtually every town in America, they’d definitely be seen more widely. Sounds like something that could be forced onto state governments as well via highway funding (like the way it was done to get states to lower the intoxication limit).

I’m a half dollar supporter (in addition to the $2 bill). Congress should mandate that vending machines (at least on gov’t properties…everywhere if it could be mustered) accept the half dollar and $2 bills (where relevant) to better promote their use/visibility by the public. I do my part, but one man can only do so much.

If Congress is so insistent on flouting both logic and the experience of every other major country by expecting the $1 coin and $1 bill to co-circulate, why can’t other government departments pull an end run around them? Every post office, national park visitors’ center, etc. should give change in $2 bills and $1 coins. No one could complain about getting a “pocketful” of coins because they’d never receive more than one at a time, plus this policy would help push both denominations into wider use.

Am I the only one who’s actually enjoying the lower mintages and the longer time that goes into finding them? No one in the collecting world talks about the billion plus mintages. It’s always the low-mintage issues that everyone wants. It’s always the low(er) mintage coins which brought the most satisfaction to find. I can only hope that 2010 mintages make 2009′s look high. This is the most fun I’ve had collecting from circulation in years.

As for those who are annoyed at not being able to get 2009 coins yet, I’d advise patience. They’re not rare. They’ll turn up eventually as they change hands in circulation.