The New Dollar Coins
Published on Nov 21, 2006 at 7:51 pm.
6 Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized, politics.
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(US Mint Images)Â
The United States Mint has recently announced the production of a new one dollar coin. The new coins will feature the images of past presidents on their fronts, and an image of the Statue of Liberty on their backs. The new coins will be available next year. The new coins will be golden in color, like the Sacagawea dollar coins. They will also have the same weight and dimensions, making them work in vending machines just like the old ones. Other features of the new coins include the minting date and the “E Pluribus Unum” and “In God We Trust” mottos printed on the sides of the coins. I am no coin expert, but this is something that I am not familiar with. In fact, I thought that the sides of the coins wore fastest, so anything printed there would likely wear off. But, it certainly does leave more room for the images on the obverse and reverse sides of the coins. Instead of the word “Liberty” being printed on the coin somewhere, as it is on all other US money, Liberty will be symbolized by the Statue of Liberty on the 
reverse side of the coin. That makes sense, I suppose, since that statue is pretty much universally recognized as the Statue of Liberty, and is an icon of the United States.Â
In the media report that I read, officials with the mint hoped that more people would use these new coins. While it costs more to mint coins, they last nearly 15 times longer than paper money. Actually, dollar coins probably last far longer than that, because nobody much uses them. The report that I read suggested that officials at the mint were hoping that putting presidents on the coins would make them more popular than the either Sacagawea or Susan B. Anthony.
OK, now for my take on this. I don’t think that the image on the dollar is the thing that matters most. Yeah, putting presidents on them might help some, but not much. I grant that the last two images might not have been the most popular available. Susan B. Anthony worked for women’s suffrage. She gets a little mention in textbooks, but outside of feminist circles, I don’t know that she’d be well known had her image not been on the dollar coin. Perhaps that is as good a reason as any for her image to be on the dollar, though.  What really doomed the Susan B. Anthony dollar, though, was inconvenience. The coin was the same color as a quarter, and virtually the same size.  Both the dollar and the quarter had reeds on the edges, so they felt the same.  They were frequently getting mixed up with quarters. In fact, there are some still in circulation (remember dollar coins last decades), and I still sometimes get them in change as a quarter (and I think that I may have spent a couple that way, too, over the years).Â
The Sacagawea dollar probably didn’t have a chance. They fixed the color and reed problem, so though they are still about the same size as quarters, they look and feel different.  However, there was already resistance to dollar coins. People didn’t like the Susan B. Anthony dollars, so they came up with all sorts of reasons not to like them:  ”They are heavy.”  ”I already get a pocket full of pennies all the time, I don’t want a pocket full of dollars.” “I don’t know who she is.” “It is too easy to confuse with a quarter.” Well, the confusion issue was dealt with. And, the reason that people get a pocket full of pennies is that those coins aren’t worth much, and people don’t want to take the effort to fish out bills from their wallet and coins from their pockets. But, if you had coins that were actually worth enough that a few coins could pay for something, you’d use the coins and not bother with the bills. Then, you wouldn’t have a pocket full of coins. But, once you get resistance to something, it stays.  Besides, the choice of image was probably a very poor one. The images was picked for political reasons, I am sure. They wanted a woman and a minority, so they picked an American Indian woman. However, they picked one that almost nobody knew!  Now, the choice was fine for historical reasons, the mint was already producing Lewis and Clark Nickels, and Sacagawea was their guide, so it fit with the Nickels. However, fair or not, Lewis and Clark get a lot of publicity in history books while Sacagawea doesn’t. So, almost nobody knew who she was. Again, putting her on the coin made her famous in a way that countless history teachers did not. But, still, there are others who could have been on the coin that more people would know. If they wanted a Native American woman, Pocahontas is far better known. If they wanted a minority, then who would be better known than Martin Luther King, Jr. (and him as a choice would complement Susan B. Anthony as someone struggling for civil rights)?
Putting presidents on the coins is an attempt to woo people with familiar faces. But, how many Americans actually know all the presidents? The ones that most know are the recent ones and the ones already on money. So, once you get past the first few, then we are back into having people on the coins that most people don’t know or care much about.  But, there is one thing that may make these dollars more popular. That is that it is a series of presidents. That means that each year there will be several new ones.  Here the mint learned something from the 50 States Quarters program. While the quarters were minted to be used in trade, a great many are out of circulation, in private hands of people collecting them.  I have a little collection of my own going, with the goal of keeping at least one quarter for each of the 50 states. Undoubtedly, many of the dollars will be taken out of circulation in the same way. But, that isn’t quite the same as being in actual use. Still, it looks like more money is in circulation. So, that is good, right? I’ll let the economists work that out. I do know, though, that the Post Office uses commemorative stamps to generate revenue. They can be used to mail things, yes, but a LOT are purchased by collectors and are never mailed. Some countries, such as Monaco actually use their stamps as a major source of revenue for the country!
 Personally, I don’t have any problems with dollar coins, and I’d be happy to use them. However, I never get any in change. Heck, I used to love the two dollar bills, but you can’t find any anywhere. They were far more useful than ones, since so many things cost closer to two dollars than to one. Merchants don’t give dollar coins in change. So, people don’t get any, unless they buy something from the post office vending machines and get dollar coins as change. A better strategy to get people to use them, rather than trying to find who people like on the dollar coins, is to simply make fewer paper dollars! Then, people would use the dollar coins because it would be that or nothing. I’ve been to other countries where coins had more value than they do here. And, people got used to paying for things with a few coins. So, if the government were serious about this, they’d simply print fewer dollar bills, and then people would have to use the coins!
Now, you ask, after all of this, why am I posting about dollar coins? After all, I normally stick to astronomy or teaching topics. Well, this goes back to the Susan B. Anthony dollar. Despite all the problems with it looking and feeling like a quarter, the Susan B. Anthony dollar had something that I really liked. On the back of the coin, there is an eagle. OK, lots of people noticed that. The bald eagle is the national bird. Eagles are on lots of coins. So, what’s so special about this eagle. Well, if you look closely, this isn’t any eagle. This is an eagle landing on the Moon. Yes, that is the Moon under the eagle, and the Earth is the little round thing in the background!Â
(US Mint Image)
The image on the reverse side of the Susan B. Anthony dollar is basically the Apollo 11 insignia. The lunar landing craft was named the Eagle. Now, I may be biased, but I think of the Apollo missions to the Moon as one of the monumental achievements of the Twentieth Century, and it is really cool to have such an achievement honored on a nation’s money. So, naturally, I am rather partial to the Susan B. Anthony dollar, even with its physical similarities to a quarter. I would have liked to have seen that image again on the back of a coin.
-Astroprof
(Image courtesy of NASA)
Ronald and Jeanne Beck on November 9, 2007 at 7:38 pm: 1
Why isn’t In God We Trust on the front or back of the coin? When you display it, it cannot be read where it is at on the side. It might as well not even be there and we believe it should be there. This country was founded by Christians and the Congress better start understanding that and so should our judges.
Astroprof on November 9, 2007 at 11:51 pm: 2
When I posted this, I had not seen any of the dollar coins yet. In the photos, it looked like the “In God We Trust” was going to be reasonably legible. However, when I finally saw one, it was clearly difficult to read. I don’t know that it was deliberately done that way to hide the phrase. Rather, I suspect that it was very poor planning and foresight. Lack of thought seems to be common with dollar coins.
Bonaparte on August 15, 2008 at 8:39 pm: 3
There’s this pretty amazing coin-holder that Canadians have been using for all their coins called Portsou™. It holds about 8 Presidential coins plus .25ct / .05 / .10 and pennies. Check it out http://www.portsou.com
Patrick C. on February 15, 2009 at 9:15 pm: 4
When you vote for left wing liberals like Obama and people like him,you will lose a peice of America every day!”Now you see it, in GOD we trust.and now you dont.”For all you so called faith base people that voted for this man and people like him,please do your homework before you vote first is taken in God we trust off our money next is what you listen to on the raido!?!?
Brain on July 5, 2009 at 9:49 am: 5
Blame all our woes on liberals and President Obama.
Brainless political hack! Turning a discussion on coins into a political rant.
JohnT on August 16, 2009 at 3:17 am: 6
Astroprof,
I liked your analysis of the problems with the Susan B. Anthony and dollar coins in general. They should have made them bigger than a quarter. Gold coloring was a good idea - however for the reasons you’ve already stated I don’t think people are going to use them much. For example I have rarely used half-dollar or dollar coins because I have to get them from the bank - very inconvenient. Why should I do that? Merchants never gave any in change and when I did receive them it was only at the subway ticket vending machines. Being like a lot men, I dislike having a great deal of coins in my pocket, say more than three dollars in quarters, nickels and dimes (and really that’s getting to be too much). If you add to that four or so dollar coins it does make a difference in weight and the bulging effect on the pants pocket.
On the other hand I’ve noticed that the EU has several denominations of Euro coins. I’m not sure why, but it seems that the 1, 2 & 5 Euro coins works for them–though I think I read somewhere that the 1-Euro is the third least circulated coin in the EU. Well, anyway, food for thought.