The Buck Starts Here - U.S. Mint introduces new Sacagawea dollar coin - Statistical Data Included

Science News, April 1, 2000 by Corinna Wu

The U.S. Mint performed some neat tricks to make a golden dollar

Poor Susan B. Anthony. A pioneering 19th-century advocate of women's rights, she suffered the misfortune of having her stalwart visage stamped on a wildly unpopular U.S. coin. Because the Susan B. Anthony dollar looks confusingly like a quarter, it never won the public's acceptance.

Now, 21 years after its introduction, the Susan B. Anthony is about to retire. On Jan. 27, the United States Mint shipped new golden dollar coins simultaneously to Federal Reserve Banks and the discount megastore Wal-Mart. Last month, the mint began an advertising campaign to introduce the coin to the public.

The new dollar is different from the Susan B. Anthony, inside and out. No stern mugshot adorns this coin. Instead, the luminous face of Sacagawea, the young Shoshone woman who guided the Lewis and Clark expedition from 1804 to 1806, gazes from the coin's face. She carries her sleeping infant son, Jean Baptiste, on her back. Its unique color and other features distinguish this coin from the Susan B. Anthony and the quarter.

The choice of metals used in the golden dollar took as much, if not more, work than the design did. "We pulled off a trick, a really nifty trick, when we chose the alloy for this coin," said Philip N. Diehl, the director of the U.S. Mint, addressing the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 23. That trick saved companies from the expensive task of retooling millions of vending machines and coin-operated devices around the country.

So far, it seems that the lessons learned from the Susan B. Anthony fiasco have paid off. The mint expects that within the first 3 months of release, demand for the Sacagawea dollar will reach more than half a billion coins, says Diehl. It took the Susan B. Anthony 14 years to reach that demand. The mint "cannot be satisfied with proving that the golden dollar is a beautiful racehorse," he adds. "Our goals is for it to become the workhorse of American coinage."

Even though consumers deemed the Susan B. Anthony a dismal failure, it's actually the most successful dollar coin the country has ever had. Nine hundred million are in circulation. The United States minted silver dollars sporadically between 1794 and 1935 and copper-nickel dollars bearing the image of Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1971 to 1978. In 1978, Congress authorized the minting of the Susan B. Anthony.

Why does the country need a dollar coin? For the mint, it's a good investment. The Sacagawea dollar coin, which costs 12 cents to make, can last 30 years. A dollar bill, costing 3.5 cents, heads for the shredder after about 18 months. A popular dollar coin could earn a hefty profit for the U.S. Treasury, just as a successful product does for a private company.

Coins also work a lot better than bills in vending machines. "Paper money is fickle," says Thomas E. McMahon, vice president and counsel for the National Automatic Merchandising Association in Chicago. "Too many times, it's not read properly, which results in a lost sale or at least a frustrated customer." Also, machines give coins as change more easily than bills.

The escalating price of vending machine items and the dwindling supply of Susan B. Anthony dollars minted in 1979 and 1980 prompted Congress to enact legislation authorizing a successor. The United States Dollar Coin Act of 1997 specified that the new dollar coin be golden in color, have a distinctive edge, and be the same size as the Susan B. Anthony. In other words, the coin has to look and feel different to consumers but resemble the Susan B. Anthony closely enough to fool vending machines.

Importantly, the act did not eliminate the dollar bill. Legislation that would have done that "sat in Congress and went nowhere for about 15 years," Diehl says. The proposal to make a coin along with the current dollar bill "flew through Congress [and] landed on the president's desk within 4 or 5 months."

The Sacagawea coin has the same luster as 14-carat gold, though it does not actually contain the precious metal, says Michael White, a U.S. Mint spokesperson. It has a wider border than other coins do and a plain, smooth edge just like the nickel. It's 26.5 millimeters in diameter and weighs 8.1 grams, making it slightly larger than the quarter.

Testing done by the mint shows that consumers, both sighted and visually impaired, can pick out the coin by feel without trouble, says White.

Whereas the coin must be distinctive to people, the country's 15 million vending machines need to treat it the same as the Susan B. Anthony. Had businesses been obliged to retune all of their machines, says McMahon, many would have been unwilling to do so, which would in turn have hurt the coin's success.

A new alloy developed by Olin Brass in East Alton, Ill., which has supplied the U.S. Mint with materials since 1964, allowed Sacagawea to masquerade as Susan B. Anthony. Vending machines identify a coin by its weight, size, and so-called electromagnetic signature. Vending machines typically test a coin's electrical conductivity by passing an alternating current through it and measuring the induced magnetic field, says Dennis R. Brauer, Olin's vice president of technology.