You remind me of the time (probably around 2002) I used a 20 to pay for some transit card/ticket somewhere and ended up with something like 15 dollar coins in change. I want to say it was a metro card in NYC.

Concurrent dismay and delight.

Around the same time I was working as a cashier when a woman came in with a Sacagawea dollar.

"Woah, look at this, I just got it as change from the vending machine. I think it's Middle Eastern. Very exotic."

"It's a dollar coin, US currency."

"Woah! No way, how can you tell!?"

"It says United States of America one dollar?"

"Oh."

>Concurrent dismay and delight.

That's exactly what I felt at the time too. To me it was always three-quarters delight and one-quarter dismay. A jangling rain of dancing gold coins is a delightful thing. Sure, now I have to go to the bank; but until that time I will walk around as a pirate, pockets full of doubloons.

The problem from a get-the-coins-into-circulation perspective is that the delight diminishes with exposure and the dismay doesn't.

Yeah, there's a moment when the weight of the change you're carrying becomes noticeable that elicits a "seriously?!" dismay response.

USPS stamp vending machines around that time period were a great source of dollar coins. Didn’t commonly see them otherwise. Never had an issue spending them afterwards. Unlike the time I was in line at a fast food restaurant when the employee at the register was yelling at a customer about fake money. Turned out the “forgery” was a $2 bill.

All the vending machines I've used in the past 5 years were tap to pay.

Vending machines are already taking credit cards, the dollar coin's time to catch on is long past.