On 28/12/2011 05:48, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Dec 27, 9:49 pm, wrote:
On Dec 27, 5:09 pm, wrote:

SEPTA, unlike NYC, accepts dollar bills on its buses. I don't know
why NYC's fareboxes aren't set up to handle that.

Because it's time consuming and a pain in the ass. Dropping change in
is easy and you can use dollar coins - though I suppose the downside to
dollar coins is about the only place I can readily find them is in
transit vending machines.

You answered your own post. Dollar coins are not easy to find.
Further, many independent merchants dislike them because they're too
easily confused with quarters. Chain store clerks gotta take them,
but sometimes they think you gave them a quarter.

Supposedly dollar coins are easy for vision-impaired to tell apart,
but the men who service our vending machines absolutely despise them,
so as a courtesy I don't use them in our machines.

Just read the mint cancelled production of more dollar coins since the
warehouses are jammed.

They're going to still make Presidential Dollars, to complete the set,
but only enough for the collector demand, not the millions of others
that were supposed to be circulating.

Speaking of which, I haven't seen a single National Parks quarter and
they've been coming out for two years now -- whereas the State
quarters showed up in change almost immediately, except for the
Territories of 2009. I finally got a DC but none of the others.

For that matter, I haven't ever seens a City of London or Belfast pound
coin here, I must say.

On 28/12/2011 05:31, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Dec 27, 7:49 pm,
wrote:
On 27/12/2011 23:49, Peter T. Daniels wrote:





On Dec 27, 6:21 pm,
wrote:
On 27/12/2011 22:57, Neil Williams wrote: On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:00:55 -0800 (PST), wrote:
SEPTA, unlike NYC, accepts dollar bills on its buses. I don't know
why NYC's fareboxes aren't set up to handle that.

The US could really, really do with $1, $2 and $5 coins for this sort of
purpose. I genuinely do not understand why people are so resistant.

Neil

They do have one-dollar coins and they and TVMs in New York City
regularly dispense them as change.

The interesting thing is that they have minted a few different series to
ease use since the late 1970s, when the Susan B. Anthony dollar replaced
the Eisenhower dollars, which were almost as big as a five-pound coin.

They were the size silver dollars had been for generations.

I didn't quite understand you.-

The Susie B's were made in a much smaller, but thick and many-sided,
size so as to make them more convenient for the pocket. (It didn't
help.)

The many sides were within the frame of the coin itself, and not on the
edges. Perhaps, had they decided to make the SBA several-sided, we might
not be having this conversation.

On 28/12/2011 05:34, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Dec 27, 7:51 pm,
wrote:
On 27/12/2011 23:52, Peter T. Daniels wrote:





On Dec 27, 6:21 pm, Miles wrote:
Neil writes:
SEPTA, unlike NYC, accepts dollar bills on its buses. I don't know
why NYC's fareboxes aren't set up to handle that.

The US could really, really do with $1, $2 and $5 coins for this sort
of purpose. I genuinely do not understand why people are so
resistant.

"If dollar bills were good enough for Jesus, they're good enough for me!"

It must mean something that the $1 bill was not redesigned with the
giant portrait when all(? I haven't seen a $2 bill since my 1993 visit
to Monticello -- where the admission fee was $8 so that they could
return Jeffersons in change) the other bills in circulation ($5, $10,
$20, $50, $100) were.

p.s. By random luck, I got a ¥100 paper note in a store a while back:
a customer was trying to use it, and the store wouldn't take it
(though they're technically still legal tender), so I bought off her
for a ¥100 coin... :]

I did that with a $2 bill once in eastern Ohio at a gas station
convenience store.

I think that two-dollar bills would be easy enough to come by as they
are in general circulation. Just go to a bank and ask for a few.-

Have you ever seen one?

Yes. I have a couple of them, as a matter of fact.

Have you ever seen a cash register till with a slot for them?

Nope.

Has the store cashier ever seen one?


Unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised of a couple of them even try to ring
the police on grounds that the customer is trying to pass false currency

I'm going to the bank tomorrow -- I'll try to remember to ask if they
have any on hand.

They should do. Or they might ask you to come back in a couple of days.

On 28/12/2011 05:39, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Dec 27, 7:57 pm,
wrote:
On 27/12/2011 23:40, John Levine wrote:

Paper notes are still far more convenient to carry than coins and the US has far
more vending machines and cash register drawers than most other countries. While
many will accept dollar coins, the ones that do tend to be government owned (ie
Post Office) or located in casinos. The far more ubiqutous soda and candy
vending machines tend to take nickels, dime and quarters, and if you are really
lucky, the have a working receiver for $1 bills.

I think if you tried it, you'd find that most vending machines also
take dollar coins. At the time the government issued the SBA dollars,
the size was chosen in cooperation with the vending industry to make
modifications to machines easy. Then they found that the coins were
hard to tell from quarters, so now they're a different color and have
a smooth edge, but people still don't like them.

I always thought that the SBA might have survived if they made sides out

The Small Business Administration? Oh, you mean the Susie B.

The _faces_ do have sides, though the edges are circular.

Sorry, I do not know all my coin terminology.

Maybe
vending machines wouldn't accept an 18- or 20-sided coin.

Would have been a one-off change over 30 years ago.

The Sackies
are round but goldish-colored and smooth-edged like a nickel rather
than milled.

I've seen them. Same with the presidential coins.

On 28/12/2011 03:42, John Levine wrote:
You answered your own post. Dollar coins are not easy to find.
Further, many independent merchants dislike them because they're too
easily confused with quarters. Chain store clerks gotta take them,
but sometimes they think you gave them a quarter.

I realize that chain store clerks are often not too bright, but they
must be totally brain-dead if they can't tell a yellow smooth-edged
dollar from a white notch-edged quarter.

R's,
John


Don't put it past them.

Speaking of which, I haven't seen a single National Parks quarter and
they've been coming out for two years now -- whereas the State
quarters showed up in change almost immediately, except for the
Territories of 2009. I finally got a DC but none of the others.

I've seen plenty of them. Perhaps it's because we need a lot of them
for parking meters.

R's,
John

On 12/28/2011 12:34 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Dec 27, 7:51 pm,
wrote:
On 27/12/2011 23:52, Peter T. Daniels wrote:





On Dec 27, 6:21 pm, Miles wrote:
Neil writes:
SEPTA, unlike NYC, accepts dollar bills on its buses. I
don't know why NYC's fareboxes aren't set up to handle
that.

The US could really, really do with $1, $2 and $5 coins for
this sort of purpose. I genuinely do not understand why
people are so resistant.

"If dollar bills were good enough for Jesus, they're good
enough for me!"

It must mean something that the $1 bill was not redesigned with
the giant portrait when all(? I haven't seen a $2 bill since my
1993 visit to Monticello -- where the admission fee was $8 so
that they could return Jeffersons in change) the other bills in
circulation ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100) were.

p.s. By random luck, I got a ¥100 paper note in a store a while
back: a customer was trying to use it, and the store wouldn't
take it (though they're technically still legal tender), so I
bought off her for a ¥100 coin... :]

I did that with a $2 bill once in eastern Ohio at a gas station
convenience store.

I think that two-dollar bills would be easy enough to come by as
they are in general circulation. Just go to a bank and ask for a
few.-

Have you ever seen one?

Have you ever seen a cash register till with a slot for them?

Has the store cashier ever seen one?

I'm going to the bank tomorrow -- I'll try to remember to ask if
they have any on hand.

(Part of their unpopularity was said to have to do with their
association -- generations ago -- with two-dollar whores and two-
dollar bets at the track, where apparently you were supposed to tear
off a corner for luck, which would have taken them out of
circulation long before what would have been their natural lifespan,
about 18 months, if they were in regular usage.)

My understanding is they're still used in strip joints, actually.
They're sometimes given in change because they're preferred in the sniff
row to singles.

I always think about getting a bunch for the novelty, but never really
feel like going to the bank anymore. And plus it sounds like they're
rare enough that people will argue with you.

On 28/12/2011 16:44, Bolwerk wrote:
On 12/28/2011 12:34 AM, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
On Dec 27, 7:51 pm,
wrote:
On 27/12/2011 23:52, Peter T. Daniels wrote:





On Dec 27, 6:21 pm, Miles wrote:
Neil writes:
SEPTA, unlike NYC, accepts dollar bills on its buses. I
don't know why NYC's fareboxes aren't set up to handle
that.

The US could really, really do with $1, $2 and $5 coins for
this sort of purpose. I genuinely do not understand why
people are so resistant.

"If dollar bills were good enough for Jesus, they're good
enough for me!"

It must mean something that the $1 bill was not redesigned with
the giant portrait when all(? I haven't seen a $2 bill since my
1993 visit to Monticello -- where the admission fee was $8 so
that they could return Jeffersons in change) the other bills in
circulation ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100) were.

p.s. By random luck, I got a ¥100 paper note in a store a while
back: a customer was trying to use it, and the store wouldn't
take it (though they're technically still legal tender), so I
bought off her for a ¥100 coin... :]

I did that with a $2 bill once in eastern Ohio at a gas station
convenience store.

I think that two-dollar bills would be easy enough to come by as
they are in general circulation. Just go to a bank and ask for a
few.-

Have you ever seen one?

Have you ever seen a cash register till with a slot for them?

Has the store cashier ever seen one?

I'm going to the bank tomorrow -- I'll try to remember to ask if
they have any on hand.

(Part of their unpopularity was said to have to do with their
association -- generations ago -- with two-dollar whores and two-
dollar bets at the track, where apparently you were supposed to tear
off a corner for luck, which would have taken them out of
circulation long before what would have been their natural lifespan,
about 18 months, if they were in regular usage.)

My understanding is they're still used in strip joints, actually.
They're sometimes given in change because they're preferred in the sniff
row to singles.

I always think about getting a bunch for the novelty, but never really
feel like going to the bank anymore. And plus it sounds like they're
rare enough that people will argue with you.


Oh, I can almost guarantee that they would argue with you.

On Dec 27, 5:09*pm, Bolwerk wrote:
On 12/27/2011 1:00 PM, wrote:









On Dec 27, 12:38 pm,
wrote:

I don't know about NYC, but in Phila, initially the driver could punch
a refund slip if a passenger overpaid. *The slip could be cashed in at
the local bus garages. *Obviously punching up a slip took time and
passengers arguing with the driver over change took time.

Could they not have also used it as partial fare payment?

No, they could only be redeemed.

At some point after the cutover, the fare refund slips were
discontinued. *Apparently people accepted exact fare by that point and
were used to it. *Also, SEPTA resumed selling token-packets at a
discount; and started selling passcards, so for regular riders, exact
fare wasn't an issue.

SEPTA, unlike NYC, accepts dollar bills on its buses. *I don't know
why NYC's fareboxes aren't set up to handle that.

Because it's time consuming and a pain in the ass. *Dropping change in
is easy and you can use dollar coins - though I suppose the downside to
dollar coins is about the only place I can readily find them is in
transit vending machines.

There, and ummmm...any bank in the country.

Chris








But unfortunately, in NYC and in Phila, bus drivers have been
assaulted, even killed, by nutcases for oddball reasons, such as a
dispute of a transfer or just because someone was agitated and wanted
to stab another person.

In message , at
22:57:41 on Tue, 27 Dec 2011, Neil Williams
remarked:
SEPTA, unlike NYC, accepts dollar bills on its buses. I don't know
why NYC's fareboxes aren't set up to handle that.

The US could really, really do with $1, $2 and $5 coins for this sort
of purpose. I genuinely do not understand why people are so resistant.

I haven't been there for a while, but the casinos in Las Vegas had
"private" $1 tokens (about the size of an old half-crown) to use in the
machines (and elsewhere). They were stamped with individual casino
names, but were accepted everywhere. Perhaps they had a private clearing
house too?
--
Roland Perry