Susan B Anthony dollar coin?

[Chris_W]

I was counting out change yesterday and in the quarters we had a Susan B Anthony dollar coin. Sheesh, I didn't even realize these were still out there, and unfortunately someone thought it was a quarter and that's what we must have thought too. Have any of you seen one of these lately? I'm going to take it to the bank to get a real dollar

[Tigger]

"Real dollar " Yeah, the Sue B and follow-up Sacajawea $1 coins are a stupid size. But printing the paper dollar continues to be a huge waste of government money.

If I were king, we'd have a dollar coin that makes sense, put that in the money tills in place of hugely stupid pennies, and bring back the $2 bill (why not?) to put in the dollar bill place. Everybody will get over it.

[Chris_W]

At least the other dollar coins are a gold color. It sure would make sense to get rid of the paper dollar to save some costs.

[Tigger]

The U.S. minted a half-cent coin until 1857, when it was deemed not needed. The 1857 buying power of that "nearly worthless" coin would be about 10¢ today.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/20 ... -the-penny

[Linda P]

I used to get the Susan B.' quite often back in my craft show days. People never knew they were dollar coins; in fact, if I caught it and gave it back to them, or gave them change for a dollar instead of a quarter, many people had no clue there even was such a thing.
I've been in favor of getting rid of pennies for years, David. About a year ago we finally gave in and got debit cards, and I have to say that I don't use cash often. Maybe that's the wave of the future; an entirely cashless economy.

[rosemarie]

Yeah, but think about carrying 10 silver dollars in you pocket or purse!! My mil saved silver $'s, we had a small bag of them and they weighed a ton!

[newtohosta-no more]

I'm not a debit person, but I do use my credit card on almost all my purchases. I sometimes see the Susan B Anthony dollars, but not often. I think most people tuck them away instead of spending them. I don't think I would want to go to dollar coins instead of paper dollars, because of the weight involved. I'm constantly having to clean out my purse of coins to make it lighter to carry. I do wish they'd get rid of pennies though. I seem to accumulate a lot of pennies.

[Chris_W]

Things are definitely going more cashless with purchases here at the nursery. Some days people spend close to 90% with debit and credit cards, which kills us at the end of the month when we have to pay the processing and interchange fees in order to handle that many card purchases. I know it is part of doing business, but we spend more to process credit cards than we do on pots and potting soil combined, and we've never seen this much card usage before this year and didn't anticipate it with this year's prices. That means things will have to go up a little bit more for next year, though we are considering a cash/check discount and a surcharge for smaller card purchases. I was once handed a credit card to pay $2.50 for a dozen eggs - after transaction fees, authorization fees, interchange and processing fees we might be lucky to get $1.75 back from that.

The main thing I'd like to see outlawed are the rewards cards, and I cringe when people tell me how wonderful their rewards are with their credit cards. What they don't realize is that the rewards are charged back to the merchants in the form of interchange fees, and the more rewards you earn the more we pay. None of those rewards are coming from the credit card companies but come out of the merchants' pockets. So merchants have to raise prices to pay for the extra fees associated with rewards cards which is then unfair to those who use checks, cash, or non-rewards cards. They pay more for their purchases to cover someone else's rewards. And it then encourages people to use their cards rather than cash, even if they have it. There are times when people pull out their wallet or money clip and hand me a credit card for a smaller purchase and have to move bills around to find that card instead of giving me cash, often telling me about those great rewards they are earning. I tell them "You're welcome," but really it should be the person behind them paying cash that should be saying that

Well, that's enough ranting for this morning I still have that Susan B Anthony coin on my desk because I keep forgetting to take it to the bank

[Linda P]

Thanks for the education today, Chris! I have a rewards card, but it's only because it's the card I've had for years on end. I had no idea where the rewards came from. It never occurred to me to think about it. I do know, from working in a friend's small business, about the merchant fees associated with credit card purchases, and would never think of using a credit card for a small purchase. She had to institute a minimum order policy for credit card use because people would want to use the credit card to buy a spool of thread.
Are there fees for you if a person uses a debit card? I agree that you have to set your prices to reflect your expenses, and I wish it would have been possible for you to predict this huge upswing in use ahead of time.