One of the things that struck me when I first began visiting Central America 30 years ago was the inability of some governments to manage what I had taken for granted in the U.S.: producing enough coins so that businesses could accept cash and make change.
Lately, however, it seems that we Americans have joined our brothers, sisters, and binary resisters south of the border. Here’s a gas station right next to Dulles Airport, almost walking distance from the center of American power:
To add to the Latin American authenticity of the experience, the sign is in Spanish (“No Tenemos Monedas”) and the cashier was apparently a native Spanish speaker. Note that he/she/ze/they is touching his/her/zir/their mask, thus negating any conceivable benefit from the non-N95 device.
Maybe the situation is less dire in our largest stores? From Septembrer 14, 2021 at Home Depot in Jupiter, Florida:
What caused the U.S. circa 2021 to be like Guatemala circa 1991, at least with respect to the ability of conducting transactions in cash?
Most likely the stores are lying because they don’t want to buy a stash of coins if most people pay by credit card (in Europe at least stores pay a percentage to the banks for coin rolls). Time to start paying cash again before that vanishes, too!
I have not yet heard about this terrible coin famine in my neck of the woods in MA. Just yesterday morning I was in my local convenience store and the register clerk was banging open rolls of nickels, dimes and quarters to fill her trays up. [She has that maneuver down pat – with one loud “crack!” she can bust open three rolls of coins at a time.] They always have plenty of pennies because a surprising number of people pay with them to buy lottery tickets, which are *cash only*. You should see what happens when they add a jar of pickles to the lottery tickets, don’t have enough pennies and have to choose something else instead of the pickles…a few months back this one woman got frustrated and started talking about invisible waves being beamed across the town to “mess with people’s minds.” She was short about $0.30 and I paid it for her out of spare change in my pocket – she looked at me like I was Moses or something.
Later today I’ll ask the owners whether they’ve been made aware of any impending shortages.
I went and asked my intrepid local clerk for her opinion a few minutes ago. She is a Distinguished Service / Purple Heart Veteran of the Retail Wars for more than 15 years, including stints at Walmart, Loews and Stop & Shop. She works locally now to save gas and keeps the store basically running tip-top on her own, most of the time (not to mention the fun she has talking with me!)
Me: “I just heard on the interwebs there’s a coin shortage in retail. Is that true?”
Her: “No, not that I know of. In fact, whenever they say that’s happening, it’s almost never really ‘A Thing.’ They put up signs, but it’s BS. The store owners just don’t want to go to the bank and move the coins around to have them counted, or they can’t trust their cashiers to count them accurately, things like that.”
Me: “So you don’t have a coin shortage?”
Her: “Nope.” <— And she reached under the counter and pulled out a tupperware container full of various denominations of coined rolls.
Me: "You guys tally up and take them to the bank almost every day for counting right?"
Her: "Yup, accurately. We always have plenty and haven't heard about any shortages. Yesterday this guy paid me in change for a bottle of Jack [Daniels] though [about $35]. He got to the end and was two bucks short, reached into his pocket and pulled out a big wad of single dollar bills. I'm like: "What the ***k? Are you KIDDING me?" I didn't say that, but…."
Me: "Yeah I know. You'd never hurt anyone's feelings. I won't ask whether [owner] still has the Smith & Wesson around, though. That would have been a justifiable shooting in my book."
[Laugh]
Me: "Take care and carry on! If you hear anything about this "coin shortage" stuff please let me know, though. #Science depends on it!"
Her: "Sure, you've got it. I've got friends all over."
Alex: When a U.S. media outlet says that it is doing a “fact check”, we know that we can rely on whatever is included to be 100% true. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/21/fact-check-america-midst-national-coin-shortage/5439455002/ says “Focusing in solely on the claim that the nation is experiencing a nationwide coin shortage — that’s true. … As the nation’s businesses have reopened, demand for coins has exceeded the available supply. … Our ruling: True. The claim that the U.S. is experiencing a coin shortage is TRUE.”
@philg: Admittedly, this is a small store in a small town, so it’s difficult for me to generalize from this one example, but I think she’d tell me if any of her other friends who work in similar jobs are experiencing a real shortage. I have a few other people I can ask in the next few days and I’ll follow up if I hear any #Truth in this matter. My friend is a reliable source for facts as she sees them – she still reads actual printed books during her breaks. I have no idea who USA Today relies on for their #Facts, but where I am, the coin shortage doesn’t exist.
This store also takes credit cards, debit cards, EBT (SNAP) and has an ATM machine. They have high traffic for a small place (about 1,000 sq. ft.) with a surprising mix of customers from the Meth-Addled Pickle Eaters to the BMW and Volvo Driving Soccer Moms and Fresh Killed Deer in the Back of the Pickup guys, and everything in between, so I trust her account more than USA Today’s.
I’d be interested to hear if the alleged contagion spreads, though. Thanks for the link.
My neck of the woods has coins too. Not that I use them anywhere except for 30 minutes parking on the main street of a nearby town. Last time I was at a local Home Depot, in the spring or early summer, coins were not a problem there. Last week visit to a local supermarket resulted in more coin change weighting down my wallet. I tipped to a round dollar number always during my Florida visit, can not say about state of (coin) change there. Floridian supermarkets did have coins.
I suspect the falling real value of coins is a big factor.
Falling real value of coins means that consumers aren’t in a hurry to take their coin jar to the Coinstar, so circulation slows down.
Low value of coins also means that businesses paying cashiers $15/hour (1 quarter/minute) are inclined to lie about the coin shortage so they don’t have to pay a cashier to count pennies.
The Fed claims they minted 15 billion coins in 2020…
I only recently noticed that Coinstar machines (of which there are too few) can provide gift certificates without a fee for Home Depot. I plan to bring several years’ worth of pocket change to the local machine, and get a gift certificate good for a few Lutron Caséta dimmers.
Lived in Cairo for a while in 2001. I don’t know how locals managed this, but we found that most merchants in our neighborhood wouldn’t accept the large denominations provided by the ATMs. But gas stations had tons of low denominations bills, and were happy to trade them for high denomination bills.
So, a typical trip for us to get vegetables from the produce vendor, we’d go to the ATM, get cash, go to the gas station, trade the bills from the ATM for smaller bills, and then buy produce.
I don’t buy the “retailers don’t want cash” theory because retailers pay interchange fees on credit card transactions that are quite large, like 1%-2%, plus they have to wait to get paid. I’m pretty sure any retailer would be more than happy to handle coins in exchange for 1-2% of revenue.
“There is currently an adequate overall amount of coins in the economy. But business and bank closures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted normal circulation patterns for U.S. coins. This slowed pace of circulation reduced available inventories in some areas of the country during 2020 . . . Since mid-June of 2020, the U.S. Mint has been operating at full production capacity. In 2020, the Mint produced 14.8 billion coins, a 24 percent increase from the 11.9 billion coins produced in 2019.”
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/why-do-us-coins-seem-to-be-in-short-supply-coin-shortage.htm
Bank closures? Or maybe Brinks trucks are working more slowly? It is weird.
Just another fake shortage. This one to move everyone onto cards where they can be controlled. Not a conspiracy some wrongthinkers have recently been locked out of their banks. Others kicked off paypal and similar.