After watching this recent update on the GoldSilver channel http://goldsilver.com/video/gold-and-silver-news-10-29-2011-eu-debt-deal/ I found this youtube vid which says the fed is opposed to it as it prints the paper note whereas the coin is made by the federal mint. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWKPLN41ri8[/youtube]
Thanks, I hadn't seen that video. However I have been following the news stories on the Presidential Dollars. The Americans are already minting Dollar coins, they are churning out 4 different coins a year. ...The mint is producing 1,800,000 of the presidential commemorative coins per day at a cost of $575,000. And they are not being circulated because no one wants them. So they go into storage, again at tremendous cost, and we are building a new storage facility also at tremendous cost. Then we will have to pay several millions more to move some of the coins to the new facility... http://www.thetimesnews.com/articles/cost-48668-september-new.html I have read that it is the American Public who do not want to use the coins that are readily available. Further.... There was some concern that the people who make the rag paper for the dollar bills would have to be laid off...seriously! Even further.... The Mint had a promotional scheme where you could buy some of the new dollars, free postage and packing. So people loaded up big on the credit card, had 1000s delivered to them, racked up plenty of Air Miles, and then took the new coins straight to the bank and deposited them, paid off the credit card bill and then did it all over again, and again, and again. It took the mint 2 years to figure it out and shut them down. I wouldn't mind a set if any of our American members are near a bank!
I think for a while there was even a discount on the face value to get them into circulation - you could buy $1000 face value for $980 or something along those lines. Heard anecdotal stories about scrap metal buyers only paying sellers with $1 coins because it gave them an extra 2% revenue etc.
You basically never see these in circulation. No one uses them. They aren't quite as big of a flop as the Susan D Anthony dollars, but its pretty bad.
Also, the video is somewhat incorrect. The Federal Reserve is not an "agency" of the US Government, it is an independent institution with private shareholders and some government over-sight. The US Mint is a part of the US Treasury, which is a cabinent level department of the US government, not an agency.
Got a couple when I was in the US last year, strangly enough out of the baggage cart payment machine at LAX, USD$5 goes in, USD$1 Coin comes out, kept them for shits and giggles
BART (train system) in San Francisco only accepts $1 coins, not notes. Remember they had coin dispensers where you fed notes in to get $1 coins out.
