Get rid of the dollar bill and those coins will take off real quick. After 18 months no one would miss having to jam a few dollar bills into a machine to buy a Coke.

Absolutely. Additionally, wider use of large coins would enable vending machines to sell more goods without accepting bills. We could do without the $2 and $5 if we really wanted.

You aren't thinking 'washington'

- it's undignified to slip coins into a striper's panties

As Marie Antoinette almost certainly didn't say, let them use tens.

I'm not sure what's stupider, people's attachment to one dollar bills or the idea that we need to get them to accept coins before pulling the paper ones.

I've been spending a lot of time in London recently, and it's shocking how much better things work with coins up to £2 and paper only for £5 and above. First of all, change suddenly is useful again, second of all, if you have paper money it's actually worth something. It used to be this way in the US too, I mean you actually used to buy things with a nickel or dime. Doing away with paper ones should not be such a big deal, it should be thought of as maintaining the status quo in light of inflation, but I guess it's a boiling frog situation.

It's a real nuisance to have US currency where there's stacks of identical looking bills that have wildly varying amounts, though usually after shopping they end up being heaps of $1 bills. You look like a gangster, but you only have $30.

Coins might be heavier, but they fit in parking meters, vending machines, and so on. Ten dollars in change isn't a whole bucket any more.

We got rid of anything paper below 10. So now 1, 2, 5 coins (and some for cents) and bills 10 and up. We used to have paper bills for 1, 2 and 5 before, nobody misses them.

Is that Euro?

Sadly, not yet. It's Litas. Only one of the three "Baltic sisters" (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) has joined Euro zone yet: Estonia.

I would love to know who had the brilliant idea of making the $1 coin so very similar to the quarter.

It's not that similar. There are no ridges, I've never had a hard time telling them apart. The Susan B Anthony coin was pretty badly designed, with both ridges and silver color.

A $1 coin should be more along the lines of the British Pound. It needs a nice, reassuring heft that tells you, "yes, guy who won't adopt metric, this really is a dollar."

Agreed. They should square, triangular or spherical so there is no confusion. :-)

Spherical coins would be interesting.