On Dec 27, 7:57*pm, "
wrote:
On 27/12/2011 23:40, John Levine wrote:

Paper notes are still far more convenient to carry than coins and the US has far
more vending machines and cash register drawers than most other countries. While
many will accept dollar coins, the ones that do tend to be government owned (ie
Post Office) or located in casinos. The far more ubiqutous soda and candy
vending machines tend to take nickels, dime and quarters, and if you are really
lucky, the have a working receiver for $1 bills.

I think if you tried it, you'd find that most vending machines also
take dollar coins. *At the time the government issued the SBA dollars,
the size was chosen in cooperation with the vending industry to make
modifications to machines easy. *Then they found that the coins were
hard to tell from quarters, so now they're a different color and have
a smooth edge, but people still don't like them.

I always thought that the SBA might have survived if they made sides out

The Small Business Administration? Oh, you mean the Susie B.

The _faces_ do have sides, though the edges are circular. Maybe
vending machines wouldn't accept an 18- or 20-sided coin. The Sackies
are round but goldish-colored and smooth-edged like a nickel rather
than milled.

of the coin, rather than make it round, similar to what they have done
in other nations. It would have helped the visually impaired and it
would have made it obvious to the casual observer what it was. I wonder
why they never did that.

Everyone in the US seems to think it would be awful if we didn't have
dollar bills, but everywhere else they've switched similar value notes
to coins, it hasn't been a big deal.

Psychological factors play a role, me thinks.

What they really need to do at
the same time is get rid of pennies and round cash prices to 5c, both
to make room in cash drawers for the dollars, and because pennies are
worthless. *We made do with pennies in 1947, and the value of a penny
then is about a dime now.

I don't think that will happen in the United States, unfortunately.
Finland got rid of its one-cent coins, however.

ObTransit: what coins do Metrocard machines take? *They must take
dollar coins, since they return them as change.

I believe that they take everything from 5 cents upward to dollar coins.

Do they take
pennies?

No, but I know that the vending machines at US post offices do take them.

NJT buses take cents. (I don't say "pennies" because we're talking to
persons of the British persuasion, and British pence were humungous --
are they still?)