Villa

Place: Villabate
Number of coins: 3
Accepted: Yes

Payment for two scoops of gelato - torrone and rainbow. A friend who paid after me was concerned that he would get the 3 dollar coins as change - but that's not what happened.

xi xi

Place: Xi'an Famous Foods (St Marks)
Number of coins: 16
Accepted: Yes

"Oh good, I was running out!"

phayul

Place: Phayul
Number of coins: 6
Accepted: Yes

Part of our payment was made using 6 dollar coins. No problems here!

Karepan

Place: Zaiya
Number of coins: 6
Accepted: Yes

Some pastry: the coins were accepted without even a curious glance.

Bad New For Dollar Coins

The US Mint no longer allows credit cards purchases of dollar coins through their website. The announcement, currently here, states:


The Mint has determined that this policy change is prudent due to ongoing activity by individuals purchasing $1 coins with credit cards, accumulating frequent flyer miles, and then returning coins to local banks. Local banks, in turn, returned coins to the Federal Reserve. While not illegal, this activity was a clear abuse and misuse of the program.


Was this in response to the slanted NPR article from a week ago? This is problematic, because while there was fraud going on, it seems clear that this was also a major avenue for coins to actually become distributed, judging by the statistics.

The information US mint blog has posted that there is also currently legislature going through congress hoping to put an end to the presidential dollar coin series.

Given these pieces of news, it seems like whoever has a vendetta against the dollar coin has been winning people over very recently; time will tell how this goes.

MMMex

Place: Downtown Mexican Bakery
Number of coins: 18
Accepted: Yes

The usual.

Hello Hello

Place: Sa Aming Nayon
Number of coins: 6
Accepted: Yes

Some late night halo halo. I chatted with the Filipina woman working there. Upon giving her the coins:

"Oh, so pretty!"
"Yeah, some people don't like them"
"I don't know why, it's money!"

alsio:

"Oh, I ordered take-out from here before ... I got the ampalaya ginisang"
"You like that??"
One of my favorites.

Farmer's Market

Place: Union Square Farmer's Market
Number of coins: 7
Accepted: Yes

No problems getting some corn and sweet plums...

italy

Place: Eataly
Number of coins: 3
Accepted: Yes

A small purchase here. I noticed that the dollar coins just went right on top of the dollar bills.

Cambo

Place: Cambodian Cuisine Torsu
Number of coins: 14
Accepted: Yes

Finally got to try this food truck - it was very good, and the moneyman took the dollar coins with a slight smirk.

Ramen

Place: Kambi
Number of coins: 6
Accepted: Yes

Economy Candy

Place: Economy Candy
Number of Coins: 6
Accepted: Yes

I think they had a drawer in the cash register for them!

NPR grudge?

A week ago, NPR published an article called The Government Spent $300 Million Making Coins No One Wants. This week, they published an article called How Frequent Fliers Exploit A Government Program To Get Free Trips, which I saw posted on someone's feed. What's interesting is that the Wall Street journal published the same story in 2009.

The article goes on to present, as if it were news happening now, the situation where some people realize that they can order dollar coins using their credit card, build up frequent flier miles, and deposit the coins directly into the bank. The Wall Street Journal article, in 2009, covered the same story - when it was actually happening. The NPR article presents this situation like it's something that has happened recently, while in fact the Mint put in safeguards at least a year ago to prevent this from happening - any individual credit card can only order $1000 in coins per ten days. It also says these rolls are not to be deposited directly into the bank - though I don't know if/how they check up on this. Some people may still be doing this with dollar coins, but certainly at a less alarming rate than before.

Further reading of the NPR article actually goes on to explain that these things are, more or less, _not_ happening right now. This leaves me wondering what the point of NPR publishing the article - on something that happened a few years ago - was. Were they hoping people would skim it and think it was happening now? Why? It's also interesting that they would publish, essentially, two very obviously anti-dollar-coin articles just over a week apart. Is there someone at NPR who is associated with Save the Greenback? That was a joke. I think.

DTMB2

Place: Downtown Mexican Bakery
Number of coins: 18
Accepted: Yes

Yet another uneventful exchange of pirate-like gold for a some good food.

ho chee milk oh

Place: Tacos Xochimilco
Number of coins: 3
Accepted: Yes

$20 + $3 for some spicy green beef soup, pambazo (fried potato + cheese + chili oil sandwich), chalupas, tamales...

24

Place: Four and Twenty Blackbirds
Number of coins: 16
Accepted: Yes

The nice thing about paying with dollar coins is that you can arrange them in a 4x4 grid for easy counting.

Groceries

Place: local grocery
Number of coins: 4
Accepted: yes

Some basic groceries, no problem here.

Kimcheese

Place: Kimchi Taco Truck
Number of coins: 10
Accepted: Yes

A simple purchase - one pork kimcheesesteak, and one order of kimchi arancini. No problems!

BAT

Place: Lincoln Tunnel
Number of Coins: 8
Accepted: Yes

No challenge for what should be an easy exchange here.

Sausage time!

Place: J Baczynsky Meat Market
Number of coins: 10
Accepted: Yes

Some sausage for a BBQ party later in the day. Nothing interesting here!

Ice Ice Italian

Place: Rocco's
Number of coins: 4 or 5
Accepted: Yes

To get a large Italian ice (with hazelnut, cremolata, and lemon - all great), I gave the nice mustaches Italian guy 5 dollar coins. In an accent impossible to reproduce with letters, he said "ooh! a golda!". Then he realized it was only 4 dollar coins for that size and gave me one back.

Pastry

Place: Veniero's
Number of coins: 2
Accepted: Yes

This is in addition to a groupon being used to purchase a birthday cake.