Padraic Brown wrote:

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 17:22:06 -0500, Steve Okonski
wrote:

Ami . wrote:

What are your ideas on getting the public to widely use half dollar and
dollar coins in everyday transactions?

The designs don't matter, the utility does.

Or, make use of Gresham's Law and give the other denominations some
real value by adding silver and copper, and suddenly people will
gladly spend the halves and dollar coins.

Um. How will that work? There are plenty of silver halves out there
now that no one spends. Dollars too. Not to mention all those eagles
and fractions.

Exactly. Coins with real metal value will be saved. Since halves and
dollars would still have their clad, token value, they would be spent
instead. Totally capricious idea, of course, but it would get more
halves and dollar coins to circulate. As history has shown, 40%
silver halves proved a very effective way to get people to circulate
the *other* coins.