Yes, There is Still a Coin Shortage. Thanks Again Covid

In July of 2020, we shared with you information about a nationwide coin shortage. To check that story out, click here.

What exactly did this involve? To break it down. People were not going out, not going to banks, not using coins, combined with the US Mint not putting coins back into circulation, so businesses couldn't turn around and give them back to customers. Bank branches closed their lobbies, and many banks do not take coins at the drive-thru tellers, all of this compounded into the coin shortage.

So, when I saw a store before Christmas, advertising that they would give you an additional gift card bonus (to their specific store) if you purchased a gift card in coins (yep, try doing that a year ago, most retailers would freak out for having to count all of those coins) I decided that I needed to see if this coin shortage was still going on or not.

Who better to really know than the US Mint? When poking around their website, I could find a great deal of information about all of the new coins that have either just been released (the first spouse coin, featuring Barbara Bush) to details about coins of the future (the Christa McCaulf coin), but I decided to continue to look into this.

At my local grocery store, they still had the signs up asking people to pay with exact change if they had it, but my local drug store did not, so back to the US Mint site. What I did find on their Facebook page was information dated on 12/24/2020, encouraging people to head out to retailers, piggy banks in hand, to purchase gift cards using the saved coins.

Here is a look at their suggestion, what the US Mint had to say:

Have you seen the signs, asking you to pay in coins? Does this make you change the way that you were going to pay? Do you have a stash of coins at home and just keep filling up the jar(s)? Or do you actually use your coins?