Where Have All the Sacagawea Dollars Gone?
I remember seeing my first Sacagawea dollar. It was summer 2001, and I was working at the Boogie Woogie Bagel Boy in Oakland, Calif. I thought it was a joke, like the $200 bill a guy tried to use the day earlier. It was, obviously, for real, and the rest of the summer rained golden dollar coins. It was exciting. In the fall, I came back East, and my Sacagawea spottings became fewer and fewer, until there seemed to be no Sacagaweas at all. I once worked in a bar in D.C. that had two Sacagawea coins permanently stationed in the corner tray of the cash register. The drawer always came up $2 short until someone remembered the coins. We didn’t know what to do with them. Give them as change? Take them home as tips? Include them in the drop? They seem like fake money. No one uses them. Are they just piling up in collectors’ houses?
During a little Sacagawea research, I stumbled upon this shocking information. There are presidential dollar coins! The Mint is releasing four a year. 2007 saw the unleashing of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. 2008 has already brought Monroe, with Adams (the other one), Jackson, and Van Buren close behind. I’ve never seen any of these coins. Have you? Why make money if no one’s going to spend it?
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3:44 pm
I saw one of the dollar coins for the first time last night. I thought it was a fake Franklin mint thing- I couldn’t find a date on it!
6:33 pm
This country is never going to get serious about using dollar coins until the Mint stops printing dollar bills. This is how Canada made the switch. Coins make more sense (no pun intended) because they last many times longer than paper, making them cheaper despite their higher per-unit manufacturing cost. Until the dollar bill is dropped, the Mint is wasting its time with the presidential dollar coin series.
7:04 pm
I’ve been using the presidential dollar coins since they came out, I usually get 20 or so and end up keeping a few of each. They’re great to use for my young kids, they’re gold in color so my 3 year old son thinks they’re pirate treasure. My 5 year old daughter has an easier time getting them into and out of her pockets than paper bills. I just kind of like them, no real reason I guess. I keep one jingling in my pocket with a few quarters.
8:36 pm
I would love to use more dollar coins but my bank (a large branch of Bank of America) rarely has more than a dozen gold coins available. Maybe if they were available, people would use them.
8:53 pm
the sacagawea dollars are all down in ecuador.
they switched from their old currency to the US dollar back at the beginning of the decade. i was down there 2 years ago, and everywhere you went, you got sacagaweas for change. after a day, you could have 15-20 of them in your pocket.
10:33 pm
Says something that Ecuadoreans prefer dollar coins to dollar bills, doesn’t it? If anything, they have much less incentive than we do, rationally speaking, to use coins. First, they do not pay to print the bills — we pay to print the bills that they use. Second, they have to ship the coins to Ecuador, and coins of course weigh more (so much more than it likely overwhelms the fact that the coins last longer).
What can I say, we’re just inherently more conservative than civilized nations.
P.S. The Northeastern states see much more use of dollar coins than the rest of the US, largely because they’re given as change in transit systems. Of course this is changing with credit cards and magnetic and proxcards. But it’s the main reason that the Mint had to make a 1999 reminting of the Susan B. Anthony dollars. (The ones stockpiled from the Carter era were beginning to run out.) The 1999 reminting in turn gave way to the 2000 Sacagawea dollars.
9:04 am
Ready for another shock? Next year, we will see new Native American Dollar Coins. That will make five different dollar coin designs each year.
10:06 pm
Wow. So if I’m getting this right the Treasury will be minting 7 different dolor coins every year? Seams like a little much.
4:24 pm
So what’s the answer to the question “where have all the Sacagawea coins gone? They can’t all be in Ecuador. Wikipedia says they piled up in the US Treasury vaults, because merchants didn’t stock their tills with them.
I can hardly find them at the banks in town, though today I succeeded in trading a roll of Martin Van Buren’s (who?) for a roll of Sacagawea’s. But they weren’t handy, they had to be put together in a roll, I had to wait.
Wikipedia agrees that $1 coins won’t suceed until the paper bill is removed from circulation. It was the printers and inkers who lobbied against that. What self-centered idiots.
What we need to do is request them from Wal-mart, from supermarkets, gas stations, and other merchants.