Whatever happened to the dollar coins, both the Susan B. Anthony and the newer Golden Dollar? I, for one, would rather use a dollar coin than the ragedy old smelly paper dollar bills. Of course the answer seems to be that people are hoarding them or otherwise afraid to use them because they don't believe they are real and would not be accepted by stores. I reluctantly admit that they are too much like a quarter in size but then blame this on the Federal Government. They could have just eliminated the half dollar (I have one in my "collection".) and made the new dollar coins the size of a fifty cent piece, but NO, that would have been too easy and when does the U.S. Government ever do things the easy way?

When I was a kid living in Reno, Nevada, in the fifties, they still had the silver dollars in circulation and those big suckers could never be mistaken for anything else. They also continually wore holes in the pockets of my jeans. Now I would settle for a pocket full of half-dollar sized coins however.

I also think the banks bear some blame in this as they keep some paper money in circulation far too long. Currency which looks like it has been through the laundry a few times, although it doesn't smell like it, plus currency which has been defaced by shopping lists, phone numbers, or whatever, should be removed once it is returned to a bank. Maybe various merchants could help out by exchanging that currency with their banks for clean money. Hmm...that could give a whole new meaning to the term "money laundering".