It's been two months since the U.S. Mint released the first of the so-called Presidential Dollar coins, and I've yet to actually hold one in my hand.
You see, Americans have a bit of a problem when it comes to introducing dollar coins into national circulation. We see the dollar coin as a collector's item. Grandmothers give them as gifts to grandchildren and urge them to collect every president's head, or every state quarter. We get an occasional Sacagawea dollar with our change at the mall and rather than circulate it, we hold onto it as a curiosity. Even the most "popular" of our nation's dollar coins, the Susan B. Anthony dollar, only circulated for two years before the mint began producing the coin only for collectors.
Why are we, as Americans, so averse to letting the dollar coin into our lives?
Dollar bills are a major annoyance. First off, they get those creases in the middle where we fold them, making them difficult to push through a dollar slot on a Coke machine. You might as well completely forget about it if the corner tears off - that dollar's not going anywhere. And think about it, it's not difficult for "ones" to tear and fade, because they're the most frequently used of all bills in American currency. This means we're spending more money to keep replacing circulating dollar bills that become uncirculatable.
To make it worse, dollar bills overstuff our wallets. If you've got more than a handful of greenbacks at any given time, you either have to trade them in for a larger denomination bill or hope you manage to find your way to a strip club at some point that week.
Dollar coins, on the other hand, are smaller and more difficult to damage, thus being able to last much longer than an ordinary bill. They're also portable, and if you feel like carrying 25 of them around with you, just put them in a dollar roll, which is still smaller in size than a dollar bill.
Canada had the right idea. When it launched its dollar coin, now known as the Loonie, in June 1987, production of the dollar bill was eliminated after a year. This gave Canadian citizens a year to get acclimated to using the coins, and then as old money was destroyed the dollar coin became their only single dollar denomination. When the nation released a two-dollar coin (the Toonie) in February 1996, the government phased out the two-dollar bill as well. Both moves were highly successful, and the coins were widely circulated in a short period of time.
Hear that, Americans? If you want a coin to circulate, it needs to be ubiquitous. The dollar coin needs to permeate the American consciousness and there's no way to accomplish that on a wide scale without phasing out the dollar bill.
Meanwhile, as far as the Washington dollar goes, 340.4 million of them have been produced in two months, yet they're not circulating. And in May, we'll get the John Adams dollar, followed by the Jefferson in August and the Madison in November.
Until we get past this "collectible" view of dollar coins, none of them will be more than a very expensive curiosity marketed as currency.
Write to Jonathan at jonathansanders@justice.com
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