Canadian Silver Dollar

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It is a noble ambition… Well, at least it’s a worthy try to save some money. Paper bucks don’t cost much to make either, but they only last about six months on average .

The buck coin has never been incredibly popular with the public. Back in 1794, when the 1st US dollar coin was introduced, a buck was a lot of cash. That was fine. The fledgling US mint was initially a jury rigged establishment unknown for its potency. Mintages were low.
And besides, the Spanish silver’piece of eight’ was way more abundant. The US Congress stated the new American buck coin be made to a design similar to that of the Spanish coin, which it also allowed to circulate as legal tender till 1857.
by the point the mint had developed into a more significant institution, with adequate capability to produce coins of top quality in sufficient quantity, the requirement for the still big silver dollar was threatened, first by the Civil War, in which coins of every size were hoarded by the citizenry, and then, as an outgrowth of the wartime coin deficit, the growing approval of paper money. Paper dollars were more acceptable, especially in the populous Eastern states.

Now, it’s interesting to understand, that although the public, except at the gaming tables in Nevada, has never been fond of the’silver cartwheels’ — the governing body has rarely let that stand in the way of dollar coin production.

And so they were — by the millions. But they did not circulate, at least not in the quantities being produced. Almost all of the silver bucks of that age were put into canvas bags and stored in bank vaults.

Many were stored at the mint. I have personally noted the curved hollows made by these coins in the lead lined walls of a San Francisco Mint vault when I toured the building years back. And when I was a kid in the 1950s, I could take a 20 greenback bill to my local bank and exchange it for a roll of 20 silver dollars.
Moving ahead to 1971 a new buck coin appeared. This was the Eisenhower buck, which commemorated the first President remembered by almost all of the Boomer Generation. It was actually the same size as the old silver buck, but at best, contained barely forty percent silver. The 1st time I received’Ike’ bucks in circulation was in 1972 at a gas station in California, just outside the Nevada state line.

Then in 1979 we were offered another chance to love the dollar coin. Anthony dollar wasn’t particularly fetching. It had no silver content in the slightest and, it was very near the dimensions of the quarter. Those who tried to spend them were regularly rebuffed as short changers by assistants who had small time to scrutinize each coin for the piercing glance of Susan B.

With its golden color it seemed like no other US circulating coin — but without success. It didn’t widely circulate either.
Now in 2007 we have the Presidential greenbacks which will be struck for 4 different presidents every year until all presidents who’ve been dead for no less than two years have been honored. They’re the same golden color as the Sacagawea coin, and so far, these too have did not circulate. Folks love their paper greenbacks. Even with the success of nearby Canada in circulating a dollar coin, success eludes the US coin.

Why has Canada managed to tug this off? No more Canadian paper dollars, that is’s why.
This is because the mint spends a few cents to produce the buck coin, but gets to carry the coin on its books at full face price. The difference is known as seniorage. It makes the balance sheet at the mint a healthy shade of black, and helps to offset the ugly red numbers that come from making cents and nickels!
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