The fact that they never went to increasing coin values, and the $1 coins tend to get put out and disappear might have something to do with their uselessness.

I'd like to see a $5 coin. It would look great with Reagan's mug on it.

I always feel like a jerk when I pay things with coins. Which is why I have about $100 in quarters in my closet. And don't get me started on pennies. At least you can snort coke with bills.

This same "eliminate the penny" stuff comes up every couple of years. If they're useless, the use of them will fade out on its own and all coins will end up in the possession of banks and the federal reserve.

Until then don't worry about it.

There is nothing like being in a country that doesn't have small bills so your pockets get weighted down with $1 and $2 coins. Not fun after awhile.

It's not time to do away with coins. It's time to do away with the penny and the nickel at least. It's time to do away with the dollar bill and keep dollar coins (and put a president on it, but don't make it enormous like the Eisenhower dollar). Maybe make an effort to circulate the $2 bill, or replace it with a $2 coin.

We print tons of dollar bills, and they last an average of a year and a half. Coins last hundreds of years.

I rather like coins, actually. Here are my issues with doing away with coins:

1 - "Coins were originally designed to be durable for daily transactions and fragile bills for infrequent large transactions." Originally, coins were the only currency, weren't they? Ancient civilizations that had coins did not have paper bills. The idea of coins AND paper bills as currency is newer, by comparison.

2 - Vending machines. I can only flatten out a crumply dollar so much...and it STILL won't take it.

3 - Laundromats. Wherever they may be - college, down the street, wherever. Quarters are vital to life.

@ShadowFalls:

The fact that we never stopped printing dollar bills has more to do with the failure of $1 coins than anything else. You can spend them at a store, but then the store doesn't give them out as change - they go straight to the bank.

@I Love New Jersey: Yeah, I think people forget how difficult coins are to carry, and how easy they are to lose, which is why people don't use $1 coins. And $5 coisn?! No thank you!

That said, I don't think we need to get rid of pennies. People still use them. I still use them. As Canino touched on, if they were "useless" people wouldn't use them.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: Why the nickel? I'm not about to give someone $3.10 if I owe them $3.05.

I like the idea of getting rid of pennies, but I really think that doing so may just drive inflation even further. So I say, keep the pennies, ditch the 1 and 5 dollar bills and replace them with a 1, 2 and 5 dollar coin. Coins are expensive to make, but how many bills would have to be printed to equal the life span of a single coin?

I've always favored coins over bills. Although they are a bit bulky to carry around, coins are durable and their physical appearance can hold up much longer than bills. I'm all for the euro style currency in America. Bring on the $5and 2 cent coins !! :)

@Canino: No because they KEEP MINTING THE DAMN THINGS. Also because it's not legal to just round change off. Not that it would result in a net loss since you would end up rounding some up and some down.

Being used to dealing both with Dollars and Euros, I must say that increasing the monetary value of coins is a very bad idea. Even though I try to pay with coins in Europe, their amount keeps increasing so rapidly that after a week I'm having problems keeping my pants up with all the coinage in my pockets. Plus, since I can pay for an entire grocery purchase with coins, it takes me forever to pull all the coins out, put them on the counter and sort out those I need for paying. The odd few cents in the US are much more easily dealt with at the cash register, and I never end up having too many of US coins in my pocket.

The Treasury has been wanting to go to more coinage over bills for a long time now and the reason is durability. There is enormous expense involved in evaluating, destroying, and printing replacements for worn out paper currency.

@nakedscience: A nickel is worth FAR less than a half-penny was when they stopped minting those. I guess you would have been complaining then, I'm not gonna give some guy a PENNY if I only owe them a HALF A PENNY!

@I Love New Jersey: And then you sit down in your movie theater seat in your khaki pants when all of the sudden your $5, $10, $20 coins slide out of your pocket and clang down the rows...

@HiPwr:

Not to mention coins are harder to counterfeit. You couldnt exactly print a $100 coin on the ol' color laser printer.

@ShadowFalls: It depends on where they disappear to. I used to work at a Federal Reserve Bank branch and they had pallets of bags of Susan B. Anthony dollars that no one wanted. Those coins were, in effect, useless (although not worthless). Coins that get stowed away for posterity by private collectors are beneficial to the monetary system, however. That is why the state quarter program was considered a success.

1. is irrelevant but it seems the newer thing might be advantageous, no? Like cars vs horse-buggies.

2. Vending machines will take debit cards soon enough, remove the change handling apparatus and make room for a card processor!

3. Seriously, you have to use coin-op laundromats and you LOVE quarters? WTF.
That's like saying "As someone who gets stabbed weekly, I'm really nervous about this whole "getting knives off the streets" program."

When I lived in a place with coin-op washers, i'd curse having to go get rolls of quarters from the bank monthly so we could do laundry. Just eliminate coins, and guess what, coin-op laundromats will update their shit so you can use a little card thingy, like most residential laundry rooms already use.

And to all of you cheap ass complainers out there who are saying "OMG WITHOUT PENNIES I'D SOMETIMES HAVE TO OVERPAY BY AS MUCH AS 2 CENTS!!" I say, STFU and get a credit or debit card and then this won't affect you at all, plus you won't be so damn annoying in front of me in line paying with goddamn pennies.

@nakedscience: Not to mention that if you do away with the nickel and the penny...how are you going to get that 5 cents in change?

I always thought coins would be around until they found a practical solution to paper money. which in my theroy would be a digital card that would allow you to withdraw/deposit money directly into your account, and display the current balance right on the card so there would be no hassle with bounces. you could still swap money with friends by simply conjoining the cards and somehow (voice?) telling the card how much to transfer. of course this probably wont happen for another 15-20 years.

@Vanilla5: For your #2- I've always wanted there to be a miniature trouser press next to the bill-taker on vending machines. That way I could press my dollar and get my darn pretzels.

Maybe it has something to do with the hobbits and elves, but New Zealand seems to be doing just fine without one and five cent pieces.

Here we go again, the annual: Let's get rid of the penny crusade!

But to have state & local sales taxes require pennies.

The real reason some people want to get rid of the penny is to bring in a value added tax masquerading as a national sales tax.

Do away with money altogether. It's the root of all evil.

Well, I use $1 and $2 coins all the time and they're just fine for me.

But yes, they do fall out of my pocket sometimes, which sucks.

The US should stick to bills, though. When your banking system finishes collapsing and superinflation hits you, you can overprint the bills.

Lately it seems that paper money is even going away. Debit cards are so easy to use that I find myself rarely paying in cash.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: I'm with you as long as they take away Nickelback too.

If it had his face on it I wouldn't use the coin.

@West Coast Secessionist: Really? They can't just decide that the cost of a widget is 55 cents or 50 cents instead of 52 cents? How do you prove that they're rounding as opposed to a hundred other reasons for increasing or decreasing the price?

I hate paying with pennies, but if I'm just getting a soda and bag of chips I don't care about handing over 8 quarters.

There is a lot of research that shows that people will more readily spend coins than paper money, even if given the same amount of either. That is, if I give someone a dollar bill and give someone else 4 quarters, the dollar bill is more likely to be saved and the coins spent. Therefore, the way to stimulate the economy is to create and circulate more $1, $2, and $5 coins. People will use the money, rather than stuff their mattress with it.

@West Coast Secessionist: I was living in Britain just before the half-penny got phased out. A few stores still priced stuff with half-pence and my recollection is that they would generally just round the price up a penny in practice.

I thought that paper was the real waste, since coins last much longer. Can't we just make coins with cool patterns and make those higher denominations, like up into $20 and get rid of paper bills entirely except for plastic 20's, 50's and 100's?

@Joshua Davis and HIV 2 Elway:

I don't really see the need to turn this into a political discussion.

@HiPwr: If you're just using the old proverb, then it's the love of money that is the root of all evil. If you're just stating your own opinion, then ignore this. :-)

@HIV 2 Elway: Defacing US currency is a felony.

@Canino:
You're mistaken in assuming that they're still useful because they're still used. They're still used because 4 transactions out of 5 will not end in an amount divisible by $.05. That's not going to change. Even if stores priced everything in increments of $.05, the tax would screw it up. Tax is calculated at the end, not for each item. With most tax rates it's not possible to price everything to eliminate pennies after tax.

So we have an artificial need for pennies - pennies that cost more than $.01 to mint. I've never heard any convincing argument against eliminating the penny.

@moore850: You like spending money to make negotiable instruments, huh? That would be insanely expensive...

@larrymac: Okay, maybe it is the seed of all evil.

@Vanilla5: I used to live in a neighborhood with a dense apartment population and no one would ever give you quarters. I hated going to the bank for them. I wish my current apartment would update

@Rectilinear Propagation:

Rounding would happen at the end of the transaction. Prices would not need to change.

@Darklighter: Well played.

@West Coast Secessionist: There is a huge difference between FIVE cents and a HALF cent.

@pecan 3.14159265: yeah, that's what doesn't make sense. get rid of the DIME, i can see -- but the nickel? if i'm owed 5 cents, i'm given either nothing or 10 cents, is that how it works?

@jfielder23: i have no desire whatsoever to carry around that many coins. What the hell. I'd have to get a huge bag just to carry money!

@West Coast Secessionist: Why are you yelling? Most people here have no problemg etting rid of the penny.

My issue was getting rid of the NICKEL. If you get rid of the penny AND the nickel, how, exactly, do you expect people to give change?