How is it Possible to Have a Coin Shortage?

I would guess it's because we all staying home a lot more due to pandemic, plus we started make credit card purchases online and paying for deliveries. Therefore a lot less coins in circulation..
Now the states are opening up with people getting out more and making purchases with cash, hence the coin shortage...

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

People are hording when every cent counts for many.

I have been collecting change for years and never spending it, just goes into one of 4 jars. My cross-the-street neighbors had a 4 foot tall chemical jug maybe 2 feet in diameter that they had been collecting in for at least a decade.

My favorite story is the one a coin dealer told ma about a similar jug that had been at the exit door of an old old church for many many years. Full of pennies. The church was to be torn down. They finally just wanted to get rid of the jug and gave it away to a guy who could bring in a fork lift to haul it away. He started to look at it's contents layer by layer. Pennies going back to the very late 1700s. Some worth tens of thousands each.

I've been meaning to take mine to the bank as the grandkids are now beyond the age where the contents would provide a counting lesson. I'll bet there are $500 in change in those 4 jars, but all recent stuff.

 

i just give them dollars and skip the change. the dollars won't be worth much either, in the near future

 

The begining of digital world.

Next is the cash it all can spread the virus so lets all use our plastic cards.


Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

how soon until telepathic payments?

That is the real question

 

I'm not afraid to parade my ignorance.
But I've had the same question as the OP.
Because this I can buy....

Less in circulation, but also less needed....OK.....

But this second part...

As people start getting out and using cash, doesn't that that usage of cash, in of itself create "change" commensurate to the population using cash?
I mean it's NOT like while we were all making more online credit card purchases anybody was melting down coins.

Unless it's a tidal wave of people suddenly realizing they don't have enough quarters to do their laundry...wouldn't the balance between cash purchase's and coinage available for change remain pretty connected? Unless we all have spent the past 4 months hoarding our change, the hard minted change that was available before the crisis,- should still be available.

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here.

 

The Federal Reserve, which handles the distribution of cash (notes and coin) to financial institutions, explains in two communications to its customers:

“The COVID‐19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the supply chain and normal circulation patterns for U.S. coin. In the past few months, coin deposits from depository institutions to the Federal Reserve have declined significantly and the U.S. Mint’s production of coin also decreased due to measures put in place to protect its employees.”

— “Strategic Allocation of Coin Inventories,” June 11​

“While there is adequate coin in the economy, the slowed pace of circulation has meant that sufficient quantities of coin are not readily available where needed. With establishments like retail shops, bank branches, transit authorities and laundromats closed, the typical places where coin enters our society have slowed or even stopped the normal circulation of coin.”

— “Federal Reserve Convenes U.S. Coin Task Force with Industry Partners,” June 30​

 

Only once everyone knows and accepts they are in the matrix.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Let's just say, how many people actually carrying coins or pay exact amount when make purchases?
I know I don't like to have a tone of coins in my pocket and they usually in my vehicles or drawers in my house if I have any...
Most people are carrying paper currency and get changes back when make purchases..

So my point is there's always more of a need for a business to give coins back then a customer to receive, hence the shortages of coins cause by the slow circulation..

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

This I can buy. This makes sense.
Because it explains why

But how we can have businesses and locations experiencing a shortage.

 

While most of us had moved further towards plastic and away from cash, as a disease prevention measure, there is a very substantial block of people who can't reasonably or affordably do this due to lack of adequate banking and credit services. And the greatly increased un- and under-employment caused by this pandemic has probably added many millions more people to this group.

In their situations, most cannot afford to be declining to take the coin change.

 

If anyone is a dot.gov employee, or knows one....this is pretty easy to figure out.

Coins are not indestructible - otherwise coin collecting would be waaaay less popular than it is.
Many dot.gov employees are furloughed, out with the covids, out because they're caring for somebody with the covids, out because they know somebody who is caring for somebody with the covids, etc...
So.
Fewer coins are being punched out, and some of those in circulation are not being circulated as effectively due to other trends in progress.
It's that simple.

Like most in the forum, I have a change jar that I empty out about yearly for some spending cash.
Not much....probably $300-500.
Well....that IS a lot for me.....but....you know.

This year it didn't get emptied.

Dollah Dollahs are probably next...because those linen-cotton greenbacks only last months in circulation on average, whereas coins last for a few years on average.

Interestingly enough....dot.gov has been trying to get people to use dollah coins and maybe even fivers for a long time now because they get more...er....bang for the buck.
They even put a famous Lemhi Shoshone girl on a very striking (pun unintended) copper clad example known by her oppressors as the Sacagawea dollar.
The woman's actual name and many other details of her life - including her death are shrouded in mystery and controversy.
She has several a.k.a.s (Sakakawea, Sacajawea) and she either died sometime around 1812 or 1884.
Having read Amborose's book Undaunted Courage....I'm leaning towards the former.....

The coin should have been VERY successful.......but curiously, it was not.

People dig non cash payments....and dot.gov digs non cash payments...advertisers dig non cash payments.........etc.
Red hatters, preppers (possibly, a redundancy) criminals, and extreme libertarians dig CASH.

SO....
YMMV

 

perhaps people routinely roll their excess coinage and deposit in a bank. retail likely gets coin deliveries regularly to keep registers stocked, and now, people are not going to the bank to deposit said coins

 

I don't know....
But I can't believe the shortage is being caused by people that use to roll their own collection of coins, or save change in containers not returning their coinage to banks. First of all....you can still do that if you wish...and I have to think even if people aren't doing that at the same rate they use to? That's got be a small percentage of overall coinage in the stream.

I can much more buy this explanation:

And even though personal collection, and return of coinage is part of circulation, It makes more sense to me that the shortage is being created DESPITE their being "adequate coin in the economy" and much more from the reality that we have gone months with businesses and small businesses closed and people simply not using or utilizing commerce from those sources.

I would speculate that is much more the cause, than the fact that my personal change container is overdue for a trip to the bank.

 

i don't even know what 'adequate coin in the economy' means

 

cnn: a wisconsin bank is paying people to bring in their excess coins. for every $100. worth of coins, the bank will pay $105.
they are doing this to help their retail customers who have been placing orders for coins and not being able to get them.'
it turns out that people have responded en masse, and coin hoarding has been a real thing, due to the virus.

 

I went to Popeye's yesterday and they were out of quarters.

Some of the patrons had some extra, so they squared up .

I usually carry no coins, so I was of no use in that endeavor.

Plastic is the way to go.

 

cnbc: u.s. mint asking people to put coins back into circulation

 

darn, I did my annual coin cash-in in January. Could have gotten a free lunch...