Washington inaugurates new dollar coin series
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, February 15, 2007

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Dollar coins have gone clunk with the American public, but maybe that's about to change.

Today, the U.S. Mint is issuing a gold-color "Presidential Dollar" coin that it hopes will appeal to collectors and consumers, unlike the wallflower Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony dollar coins.

Edmund Moy, director of the U.S. Mint, said the relentless pace of inflation means the time is ripe for a higher-denomination coin.

"A quarter doesn't buy a whole lot in a parking meter anymore," he said. "You've got to carry a sack of quarters around to plug that meter. Laundry, car washes are very coin-intensive services."

Weighing 8.1 grams, the same as the Sacagawea, a Presidential Dollar is lighter than four quarters, which weigh 5.5 grams each.

But Moy thinks a bigger plus for the new dollars is their novelty. He hopes they will, ahem, mint a new generation of amateur numismatists.

The Mint will issue the coins as a rotating limited-edition series, one for each president, following the order in which they served.

Presidents Day coins

The George Washington coin reaches banks today, in time for Presidents Day on Monday. Coins depicting John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are due out later this year. Four additional presidents will be honored each year for a decade. Each president's coin will be minted only once, during a single 10-week period. Only presidents who have been dead at least two years will be depicted.

"This is based off a very, very successful program, which is the 50 State Quarter program," Moy said. "It is the most successful coin program the Mint has ever had. It generated 140 million people who are collecting these right now."

A survey by the Mint found that half of Americans expressed interest in collecting the new Presidential Dollar.

Steve Silba of Richmond, who was feeding paper dollars into the bingo machine at Casino Lytton San Pablo on Wednesday, is one of them.

"I'll probably grab a few for the kids and grandkids," said Silba, who has five children and nine grandchildren. "I got all the state quarters for them."

Jack Beymer, a rare-coin dealer in Santa Rosa, agreed that the new dollar could be a hit with the younger set.

"It's kind of an educational thing," he said. "I think it will bring new people to the hobby. With the quarter, a lot of grandmothers came in and bought quarters for their grandchildren with the maps. They'd come in every time a new state came out. It formed a regular attraction for coins in general."

But using the new coin for commerce doesn't generate as much enthusiasm.

"It's too small," said Sabra Green of Hercules, who had just put a $100 bill into the $1 Lotto machine at Casino Lytton San Pablo. "I'm 55 years old, so I'm used to the big silver dollar," she added, referring to the Eisenhower dollar that was discontinued in the late 1970s.

The Susan B. Anthony dollar, which came out in 1977 to replace the Eisenhower and is still in circulation, never won fans because people complained it could too easily be mistaken for a quarter.

Although the Sacagawea coin, issued in 2000, is slightly larger and golden colored, Green and others said they still find it hard to distinguish. "It's confusing," she said. "They should do something different, like Japanese coins."

Many money experts say the only way a dollar coin will gain wide acceptance is if the dollar greenback goes away. That would take an act of Congress -- but it's not likely to happen.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed that three-quarters of people oppose replacing the dollar bill. They were evenly split on the idea of having both a dollar bill and a dollar coin, the AP said.

Greenbacks favored

Consumers like the convenience and light weight of folding bills, even though they create headaches for the government and merchants. Greenbacks last only a couple of years, while coins last for about three decades. Bills become tattered and torn, and can be hard to feed into vending machines.

Brad DeLong, an economics professor at UC Berkeley, said he thinks the penny has to become extinct before $1 greenbacks go away. "Until we get rid of the penny, there's not really enough space in cash registers to have dollar coins taking up a slot," he said.

There are some places where dollar coins are welcome. Parking meters in San Francisco and San Jose accept them. In San Francisco, they account for about $900 in revenue every day -- only 1 percent of the total $80,000 to $90,000 the city averages.

In Oakland, a new crop of high-tech meters to be installed this year will accept dollar coins as well as credit cards and debit cards. But those meters will account for only 500 out of the city's stable of 7,700.

AC Transit accepts dollar coins on its fleet of 700 buses. At BART, the coins can be used only at two stations: Oakland Coliseum, the connection link for Oakland Airport, where the coins are widely used, and Millbrae. That station serves as the link to Caltrain, which gives dollar coins as change.

Steve Peiker, foreman of the mechanical department at West Coast Vending & Food Services in Oakland, said "pretty much all" of the company's 4,000 Bay Area vending machines accept dollar coins. He said the coins are convenient to return as change so that people can use five- or ten-dollar bills and not get weighted down with a load of quarters.

The new presidential coin, which has the same "electronic signature" as the Sacagawea, will work in all those machines and meters without modification.

Still, the momentum in vending machines -- and parking meters and other low-ticket transactions -- is toward plastic. Newer vending machines and parking meters accept credit cards and debit cards. Really new-fangled ones let customers pay with their cell phones.

"The industry is starting to go toward credit card readers," Peiker said. "Most people don't carry change. They don't like change. People like just carrying a card."



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Presidential dollar coin
What: A new $1 coin featuring the nation's presidents goes into circulation today with the issuance of a George Washington coin. The gold-color coins are the same size and weight as Sacagawea dollars.

How it works: Like the 50 State Quarter program, the president dollars will be issued as a rotating series of designs, with four new coins every year for the next decade depicting each president in the order they served.

Bonus: A concurrent "First Spouse" program will feature presidential spouses on $10 coins. Each coin will contain one-half ounce of gold. Lower-cost bronze duplicates will also be available. The initial four First Spouse coins will be released on May 13, Mother's Day.
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