Dollar Coins in the Wild

I listen to the NPR: Planet Money podcast as it has great stories that are easily understandable about money and the economy.  A few weeks ago, I listened to this story - Ecuador Needs Your Dollar Coins.  It was very interesting since I only knew about the Sacagawea coins but had not seen these in person.  As the story continued, I found that the U.S. Mint has been minted new dollar coins following the presidential order - Rutherford Hayes just minted this month.


Shortly after hearing that story, I was in a parking lot in Orange County with one of those pay kiosks.  I think the fee was $4.00 but I only had a $5.00 bill.  When I put the bill in, the machine did some weird rattling and then switched to Spanish before returning one of these dollar coins as change.


I carried this coin around for a while and recently used it to pay for some postage at the U.S. Post Office.


The next thing that happened was a follow up story at NPR: Planet Money called Dollar Coins in the Wild.  I thought it would be cool to see what happens when you release coins around in the normal course of business.  I remember in Junior High School science when we released balloons with notes to see if we ever got a reply and from how far away the reply came.  Sad to say that none of my notes got any responses.


So I logged onto the U.S. Mint site - it was too late to take advantage of the credit card miles since they changed their policy to only accepting checks.  Off my check went and the coins I ordered were of Abraham Lincoln.


It took a few weeks of processing and the box arrived at my door step in a non-discript brown package.  Here are the coins in their pristine condition.

I'm going to start keeping track of where I spend these babies.  It is too bad I can't track where they will end up.


*Purchase quantity is one batch of 10 rolls of 25 $1.00 coins.  Shipping is free.