With inflation I agree they should bring back the $500 bill. 50 years ago when I was a kid the $100 bill had huge purchasing power, in fact the $20 bill was considered a big bill in the 1970s.

For coinage I'd be fine with just the dime, quarter and $1 pieces. The paper currency lobby won't let us get rid of the $1 bill but it needs to go. Along with the cent and nickel.

5, 10, 25

I believe in Canada they round to the nearest 5c for the TOTAL transaction. Individual items can be priced to 1c. Seems to have worked for them the last dozen years or so. Cents remain legal tender.

Dime, Half, $1, $2.

Coins should be resized (half is too big) and compositions may need to be changed.

Consider $5 and $10 if preventative measures can be taken to prevent counterfeiting by certain foreign countries.

If you eliminate the nickel, the quarter must go as well.

10c 20c 50c $1, $2

Get rid of cent, nickel, dime. Add a $2 coin.

@Project Numismatics said:
Dime, Half, $1, $2.

Coins should be resized (half is too big) and compositions may need to be changed.

Consider $5 and $10 if preventative measures can be taken to prevent counterfeiting by certain foreign countries.

If you eliminate the nickel, the quarter must go as well.

No! Not the quarters!😂🤣

In this day and age coins are not the problem. Bills are.

@VanHalen said:

@Project Numismatics said:

@VanHalen said:
With inflation I agree they should bring back the $500 bill. 50 years ago when I was a kid the $100 bill had huge purchasing power, in fact the $20 bill was considered a big bill in the 1970s.

$200 and $500 bills would be nice but the anti-money laundering concerns will never allow it.

I agree, and tax evasion concerns. Remarkable that $100 bill has lost 90% of its purchasing power in my lifetime and I'm 60.

A $100 bill in 2025 has the equivalent purchasing power of a $10 bill 60 years ago.

The Swiss have a 1000 franc note which equals about USD$1,100.

@renomedphys said:

@olympicsos said:
Penny, Half Dime, Dime, Quarter, Half Dollar, Large Sized Dollar for circulation.

I think part of the takeaway here is that aside from the above poster, everyone here pretty much thinks we 1. need to abolish the cent, and 2. need to rework what’s left.

The biggest problem is that dollar bills are not going anywhere. A 2019 report suggests that it would actually cost more money to replace dollar bills with coins. Now that cash is increasingly used less and there are sorting processes that allow bills to last longer, replacing the dollar bill with a dollar coin is not going to really work. You abolish the cent, you are going to have to rework the five cent piece, not only that you could get rid of the cent without Congress tomorrow collectively if we wanted to and there is a reason it has not happened. If banks can cut off CRHers for ordering too many halves, why can't they do that with cents, many stores refuse to accept them in bulk.

Cent as a collector's item only to honor its legacy as the only coin continually struck since the beginning, still legal tender but not issued en masse until deflation makes it worthwhile (I know it won't happen)

Half Dime over the Nickel, purely for cost of production reasons.

Dime, Quarter, Half Dollar can remain as they are. Make the half dollar more acceptable and supported in commerce.

a smaller non-round Dollar and a similar but larger $2 coin,

$5, $10, and a $20 as a circulating commem.

If Congress could chase out the lobbyists keeping our coinage stagnant, we can finally get ahead of the game.

It has been a long time since I have worked a cash register. I suspect losing the 50 cent would not change much in commerce.

I deal in cash in a retail situation daily, using the same cash registers and vending machines we could easily go to:
10c (dimes), 25c (quarters), $1 coin, $5 coin and then $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills. Simple.
Round the total purchase to the 1/10th of a dollar.

In 1913 the smallest coin was the cent, and its purchasing power was greater than that of a quarter today. To approximate the purchasing power of the four lowest-denomination coins in circulation 100+ years ago, I would opt for denominations of 25 cents, one dollar, 2 dollars and 5 dollars.

However, this likely would be only a temporary fix, since there's a good chance that inflation will continue to erode the purchasing power of all coins

@JoeLewis said:
10c (current size)
50c (size of current nickel)
$1 (size of current quarter)
$5 (between current quarter and half dollar size)

Or no more coins.

Add 10c, 50c, $500, and $1000 bills to the current bills in use

I think the future of coins will be bullion anyway and people do not like using coins unless they have to. It's unfortunate but it is the truth.

@jacrispies said:
No one thinks we should bring back the three cent silver??? Strange.....

In order to eliminate the cent we would need a three cent piece as well as a two cent piece in order to make change as no one would want to round up/down with their money during a purchase even if reality says it is meaningless. Meanwhile if you ask most young people if they even carry change or cash the answer is no, so maybe we don't need to do anything with coins as they will soon just be a curiosity that no one will even use shortly down the road.

PS I love three cent silvers.

@olympicsos said:

@VanHalen said:

@Project Numismatics said:

@VanHalen said:
With inflation I agree they should bring back the $500 bill. 50 years ago when I was a kid the $100 bill had huge purchasing power, in fact the $20 bill was considered a big bill in the 1970s.

$200 and $500 bills would be nice but the anti-money laundering concerns will never allow it.

I agree, and tax evasion concerns. Remarkable that $100 bill has lost 90% of its purchasing power in my lifetime and I'm 60.

A $100 bill in 2025 has the equivalent purchasing power of a $10 bill 60 years ago.

The Swiss have a 1000 franc note which equals about USD$1,100.

The EU used to print a 500 euro note until about 5 years ago...they stopped printing because of money laundering, drug use, counterfeiting, etc.

Conversely, the largest Chinese note is 100 yuan which is ~$14. I'm not sure if that is due to counterfeit concerns or government mandated currency controls (to not allow easy, unsupervised movement of large amounts).

@jmlanzaf said:
None. Coins are so last century

I there were no new circulating coins, there will probably be more coin collectors.

Let’s get weirder than the post Civil War era and start minting $13 coins.

@JoeLewis said:
For those recommending the 10c and 25c without the 1c or 5c, there would be situations where correct change couldn’t be given, right?

If you drop the 10c, then no problems with that.

I agree with your point, but I think it might be easier to drop the quarter and just use 10c and a smaller 50c. If we must have one in between, I guess we can bring back the 20c piece….😉 @PocketChange

Many of these suggestions will never fly since the vending machine industry would aggressively lobby their congressional representatives against it. They wouldn't care if the cent and nickel were dropped but they would loudly object if the quarter were to be dropped.

@lermish said:

@olympicsos said:

@VanHalen said:

@Project Numismatics said:

@VanHalen said:
With inflation I agree they should bring back the $500 bill. 50 years ago when I was a kid the $100 bill had huge purchasing power, in fact the $20 bill was considered a big bill in the 1970s.

$200 and $500 bills would be nice but the anti-money laundering concerns will never allow it.

I agree, and tax evasion concerns. Remarkable that $100 bill has lost 90% of its purchasing power in my lifetime and I'm 60.

A $100 bill in 2025 has the equivalent purchasing power of a $10 bill 60 years ago.

The Swiss have a 1000 franc note which equals about USD$1,100.

The EU used to print a 500 euro note until about 5 years ago...they stopped printing because of money laundering, drug use, counterfeiting, etc.

Conversely, the largest Chinese note is 100 yuan which is ~$14. I'm not sure if that is due to counterfeit concerns or government mandated currency controls (to not allow easy, unsupervised movement of large amounts).

There's always a country that bucks a trend. The largest Turkish note is 200 Turkish Lira which is equivalent to $5.61.

They have a huge stock of coins sitting in various government storage facilities, why are they still producing the small denominations year after year when the supply is more than enough, except there is some government requirement that could be reversed?