FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Buy Presidential Dollar Coins with CC @ Face Value, Free Shipping
Old Mar 3, 2011, 11:55 am
  #13763  
Marathon Man
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: BOS, MHT
Programs: AA ltg, B6, DL, UA, AS, SPG/Marriott Plt, HH, Hyatt
Posts: 10,052
Originally Posted by buschoi
It is. Sometimes, they even ask me how to get in.
yeah I wish a banker would ask me that. Most just cock their heads to one side and give you that furrowed brow "huh?" look while trying to act all serious. I don't even bother as I feel that most bankers and I are of completely different species or something.

Originally Posted by MojaveJack
It doesn't matter who the idiots are. As we all know, when you're on THEIR turf you have to play by THEIR rules.
Well I wasnt talking about the banks, government, stores, mint, credit cards in this case

Originally Posted by Astrophsx
You mean you aren't getting paid to bring in coins to your bank? I am... kid you not!
so do I. Once again I publicly find a way to agree with Astro! Wow! Why, this is a new beginning!


****

Anyway I was having a coin debate with a friend of mine who is privy to it all but does not partake for whatever reasons of his own. He is not a FTer either but is often intrigued with what I have told him about what we all do in here. Below is our conversation from email:



first email to friend From:MM

a moderator in the forum on the miles section of FlyerTalk said this in the coins thread...

Originally Posted by aviators99

The congress requires that the mint mints these coins as part of the presidential dollar coin program, in addition to the dollar bills that are ordered to be printed. They are not being minted to order. If we don't buy them, they will sit, and the costs will be absorbed by the government, without the revenue of us buying them.

So, the profit you're talking about could only be realized if the dollar coin law was stricken. It has nothing to do with us. We (as purchasers of the coins) are the ones who are saving the government money in this case.


friend's email 1:
I would agree, except for one thing. The purchasers of coins are not circulating them as intended. Returning them to a financial institution/bank is not circulating them. The coins’ production is based upon a calculation that their costs of production/sales will be compensated by the number of coins that are kept as keepsakes by the public, or lost down gutter drains, etc. I’m sure a complicated algorithm was computed to determine the approximate number that would “disappear” into the circulatory system, and how many would show back up at banks to be returned to the treasury as excess. I’m sure your local bank has more coins, now, than they will ever need from customer requests. They have probably been trying to return them to the treasury, but the volume has become uncomfortable for them.

If the coins were somehow being used to pay bills, and then those vendors used the coins, or then returned them to their banks, then the coins would have at least made a small journey through the monetary circulatory system, and some would have “disappeared” into personal collections or the aforementioned gutter drains,,,, thus having funded the original production of the coins.

Give them away to kids. Kids love unique coins.
And old people… for some reason….


MM's second email:

your first line, though, is based on a false premise
they HAD to put that in there to satisfy the blunders and attempted saves of the promoters of this gig.

I agree people should use them but to be honest it has been hard to do just that as someone really messed up on how to make the public--and most businesses even have the means to accept them!

(registers with a slot to hold them, vaults with slots and space for them, coin changers and machines that take them, stores and business that enjoy taking them and want to. They are not catching on)


friend's last email - also loosely quoting animal house too in it:

It is very European.

However, (regarding the false premise) when the promoters of gig pitched the program, it was qualified because of the circulation/disappearance component –offsetting its overall cost, including storage. Coins sitting in boxes unused, waiting for future purchases and circulation/disappearance is not terribly costly. Immediate purchase does, as you say, relieve them of these minor storage costs,,,, but their immediate return to financial institutions wipes out all “disappearance” factors, and therefore, there is no cost benefit enjoyed by the program or the mint.

The issue here is not whether the coin purchasers broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with their female party guests—they did. [winks at Dean Wormer]But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg: isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but I for one am not going to stand here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America . Gentlemen!
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