Will Americans learn to love the new dollar coins?
Posted
Nov 06 2008, 03:55 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
The U.S. Treasury has launched a $12 million campaign to promote the new dollar coin, Bob
Lotich at Christian PF informs us. The government hopes they'll be as popular as those state quarters everyone loves to collect. (The final coin in that series -- Hawaii -- makes its debut Nov. 10.)
Based on the history of dollar coins -- Bob says 92.7 million of the unpopular Sacagawea dollars were minted but never put in circulation -- we wonder if people will adapt or whether they'll just be more unwanted change.
The face of a long-dead president isn't nearly as appealing as the bison skull on the Montana state quarter or the Zia sun symbol for New Mexico.
Many of you are probably wondering why the government is pushing the dollar coin again. As Bob says, it hopes to save more than $500 million a year because paper money has a much shorter shelf life and printing replacements is costly. In fact, according to USA Today, the government's $12 million pilot PR effort will emphasize the environmental friendliness of coins vs. paper money.
Somehow it escaped our attention when the dollar coin program began in 2007, starting 
with the face of our first president, George Washington. Four new coins -- featuring the presidents in order of service -- will appear every year, culminating in 2016 with Gerald Ford. Only presidents who are no longer among the living can qualify.
Bob says he's not interested in using a dollar coin and likes a skinny wallet. In fact, a poll earlier this year found that only 13% of those surveyed prefer dollar coins, USA Today says. Many experts suspect the only way Americans will embrace dollar coins is if paper dollars go the way of the bison.
About those Sacagawea coins left over from 2000-2001, Bob says:
It reminds me of when my mom yelled at me for opening a new bag of potato chips, when there was a two-day-old half-full bag in the pantry. Why not use what we have sitting in a shed somewhere rather than creating more?
By the way, the final quarter in the hugely popular 50 State Quarters Program features the image of Hawaiian monarch King Kamehameha I. The U.S. Mint says about 147 million people have collected the special quarters.
