I wanna buffalo nickel NOW

[hobbes]

Yes, finally a place where I can give the company I work for a little exposure. PMX Industries

Must not be FQ hosted ... site is down

[Andilinks]

I do like this new buffalo design. But I don't think nickels have been real money since, oh about 1937--the last time a buffalo graced the reverse of the nickel. I think it's time to just eliminate the penny and the nickel, maybe even the dime altogether, these are just nuisance coins.

Andi

[Snarpy]

Tell you what Andi, if you don't like pennies, nickles, and dimes you can just send me any that come your way. I'll take them off your hands.

Snarpy

[Andilinks]

But that's my point, after you pay the freight you'll be losing money...

[Mandi]

I'm always on the lookout for a donation jar for a cause I like, because it's easier to just ditch all that weight, than to actually consider it cash. Perhaps people didn't feel that way before they had PDA's and cel phones to haul about, LOL.

I am such a plastic freak - if I can't use my debit card, I get cranky. I got my daughter one as soon as she was old enough for our bank's Teen Preloaded Cash Card program - her allowance goes straight to it, auto-debited from my account. My younger daughter isn't old enough for that yet, so she gets a paper check from our online Web Bill Pay, and I take her to the credit union to deposit or cash it. I am very glad to be done with the Cash Allowance years.

I almost never have more than $5 or $10 in cash on me anymore. I consider it my Emergency Starbucks fund.

Anyway, those rants aside, love the new coin art - I like the upgrades to our currency lately, it's a neat way to incorporate art into everyday life.

[Andilinks]

if I can't use my debit card, I get cranky.

Me too. Except that some stores charge a dollar to use debit cards but do not charge at all for credit cards--not to mention that you get a few extra days to pay when you use a credit card. So I use the credit cards, why does anyone prefer debit cards?

I do think eliminating cash altogether would be a bad thing because its anonymity sometimes adds value.

Ordinary coins will one day go the way of gold and silver coins... Nice museum pieces and collectors items.

[Stephen]

i don't think coins are likely to disappear. they've been around for at least two thousand years, certainly much longer than the dollar note. if you conducted a poll i'm sure that most people would not vote to get rid of them. maybe the penny could go, but the nickel is still good for teaching a child the value of a dollar. coins simply have more physicality than paper, an important quality for any currency. there's a reason why coin collection is a huge hobby and paper note collection a much smaller one.

it's about time they overhauled the U.S. coin set. overall, U.S. currency is probably the most boring in existence to look at. on the other hand, the proliferation of quarter designs is out of control...

[Randall]

Must not be FQ hosted ... site is down

Typo Police! Change the .cpm to .com and it works fine. (A TLD devoted to CPM?)

I think it's time to just eliminate the penny and the nickel, maybe even the dime altogether, these are just nuisance coins.

I've been piling up pennies and nickels in a jar for several years, and it's almost full. I might be willing to carry one of these new ones around for a while, though.

Now I'm starting to dump all of the quarters and dimes in a bowl next to the jar. I hate carrying around change in my pocket, so I never have any when I need it and end up bringing even more of it home with me. One of these days I'll get around to cashing it all. Or maybe I'll donate it to something.

Randall

[sheila]

Originally posted by hobbes:
Must not be FQ hosted ... site is down

Maybe he typo'd on his link.

Instead of http://www.ipmx.cpm/ (wrong)

He should have entered: http://www.ipmx.com/ (works)

[Andilinks]

i don't think coins are likely to disappear. they've been around for at least two thousand years,

Yes, they began to appear later than the chariot, clay jar (amphora), papyrus scroll, quill pen, leather hinge and hundreds of other inventions that lasted thousands of years before being obsoleted. You are right, they won't disappear. But I wager they will see diminished use in the future and we may even live to see them obsoleted.

there's a reason why coin collection is a huge hobby and paper note collection a much smaller one.

The fact that coins make better collector's items than paper currency has little to do with their utility as money. For one, face value and the fact that most collectors begin in childhood when paper notes are too expensive to collect. For those thousands of years coins were more popular than paper they also had intrinsic value as precious metals. Pennies now actually have less value than the copper content which is why they are no longer made from copper...

Coins do have a tremendous inertia because human habits are difficult to break. Like many other habits tied to a particular technology it will probably take a generational shift to obsolete coins.

Andi