By the way, the US Mint DOES keep lots of coins in the Federal Reserve if they feel that collectors are the only one buying them. If the US Mint feels as though the Sacagawea coins will be hoarded and NOT CIRCULATED, they will stop giving them to the banks.

The mint used to say that us collectors were ‘hoarding’ all of the silver dollars in the ’70s (as reported in the latest issue of CoinValues mag). However, during the ’80s and ’90s there really weren’t any interesting new coins being minted that were worth collecting (Kennedy Half Dollars are ultra cool–to me, anyway, but they don’t have much value because there’s basically no silver in them!), so the US MINT decides to come out with the State Quarters to get people interested in collecting coins again!! They didn’t bet on SO many people hoarding these coins, though!!

I bet they thought that people would hoard the Presidential Dollars, too; but they feel like kind of a ‘rip off’ because they are talked about as ‘Golden Presidential Coins’, yet they are really made of brass!!

So, I can’t answer your question: why make money that no one wants to spend. All I can tell you is that I am a hobbyist collector and I LOVE the Sacaqawea Dollars: I don’t carry them around and spend them, though, mostly because I’m 100% disabled and they are heavy! Imagine carrying around 40 coins instead of two twenty dollar bills! Haha.

PS I like the NEW Sacagawea coins with the Three Sisters backing that came out this year…2009. One interesting thing about the Sacagawea dollar is that at least there is a woman on the coin. This has nothing to do with feminism, either. But are you aware that ALL US coins had Lady Liberty on the obverse side until Abe Lincoln arrived (rightly so) on the Wheat Penny.

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.

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.

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.