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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

That is interesting, but IMO what's interesting is that USD coinage doesn't go as high in value as anywhere else I'm aware of.

(Continental) Europe has €2 coins, worth just slightly more than two dollar 'bills', here in the UK we have £2 coins (worth slightly more again) (and commemorative £5s), Canada has 'twonies' too.

The 50¢ top-out seems surprisingly low now that I think about it. Is there any particular reason it's developed that way?

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US has a 1$ that you don't see that commonly, but I have (anecdotally) gotten it back from Vending machines as change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_coin_(United_States)

In San Jose they used to use them for trolley tokens! But that was years ago. The price has probably gone up.

Yeah what happened to those?

A decade ago I remember being surprised that they were becoming a "thing" -- getting them as change, might have been from vending machines too -- but now I realize I haven't seen one in years.

I lived in Ecuador for a while and they use USD as their currency. They have all of the dollar coins.

As I understood it, it's a cultural thing in USA where they really like the feeling of lots of dollar bills https://youtu.be/gonVHW_X79U

Can't put a coin in a g-string...

the ticket machines for the patco train in NJ to philadelphia still give them as change i believe, although i havent used them in years.

Before they added a refillable card, i hated getting a heavy pocket full of golden "pirate money" (sacajawea's or presidential dollar coins) buying a $3 ticket with a $20 bill, if i forgot to bring smaller bills.

$.50 coins are also pretty rare. I can't think of a single time I've seen them used (or used them).

Well, that explains why I couldn't think what they were called! ('Obviously not a quarter... Dime? No, that's not right...')

They're called "half dollars" (which follows the US mentality of defaulting to fractions where possible): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_dollar_(United_States_coi...

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