As an FT'er it's no skin off my nose since I wasn't doing the coin thing. If I was, though, I'd be pretty :mad: at the risk of having it blown. There's not a lot of "free" points out there and getting a gravy train is nice. :-:

As a tax payer there's no value in the mint paying the shipping for tons (literally) of metal around the county via UPS so it can be deposited at a bank. :-:

So it goes. :rolleyes:

Fair point, but there's no way that:

A) the Mint was paying full rates on that much volume shipped

B) The coins were going to cycle through the banking system anyhow.

Very interesting. So basically if you use the coins for transaction this is a perfectly good thing to do. :rolleyes:

From te way i read it, the mint actually started the process of shutting this down well before he said anything here. We all knew weeks ago of issues.

Plus1! The banks that I frequent said that there weren't any requests for the coins by any customers!:rolleyes: I definitely use coins whenever I get the chance -- it's my way of helping the 'cause' -- but I can't see paying more than $10 in coins in a single transaction (but that's just me!):D

re A: Even though they're compact they're heavy. I'm not sure that the mint could have gotten too great of a discount. I'm sure there's a FOI request to be made to figure out how much they paid for shipping on this thing.

re B: I considered this, but if they needed to get the coins into the banking system there's a more efficient (I presume) way to do so than UPS and folks carting them to their local bank.

This is the very thing that has me working carefully to avoid OMNI/PR.

In other news, I might actually go on a date Thursday.

Americans are unwilling to accept change (no pun intended) and many people view the Mint with a jaundiced eye because they can make eleventy bazillion dollar coins and say that the coins are "saving the country money" but they cannot lobby, beg, cajole, etc. either the correct people or the correct amount of people (read: votes) to cease production of the world's ultimate loss leader, the penny. That's why aggressive marketing is needed, and the aggressive marketing was probably Plan B after the big banks told the Mint to go :rolleyes: themselves because there's no way their walk-ins would want to leave with dollar coin instead of being handed singles. And let's not dare to imagine what the exotic dancer community would have said in response to to reductions in $1 note printing.

Woo hoo!^

I agree with this. in order for the US to change the mint will simply have to phase out the dollar bill. No other way around it. Also think of the expense of training people to know the difference between the quarter and the dollar coin. :confused:

Good for you. :-:

(I so love not dating.)

How does this work in Europe? I can't imagine the 5 euro note is the baseline :D

Yep!^ In other countries, the paper currency was simply replaced by the coin equivalent -- simple as that!:rolleyes:

Nah, it can't be. The guys must throw coins and the dancer then has to sweep them up at the end of the set. American girls have a Crown Royal bag; European girls have a Swiffer and a large plastic jug.