A Flip Of the Coin

They're Bright, New and Shiny. And You Can Bet Your Bottom Dollar, They're a Thing of the Past.

Americans are using less cash but are seeing new coin designs. The Washington dollar leads a presidential parade. (Photos By Michael Williamson -- The Washington Post)

The 1979 Susan B. Anthony dollar coin flopped. The 2000 Sacagawea dollar coin did little better. Nonetheless, the U.S. Mint in its infinite wisdom last month launched yet another new dollar coin.

Sit down in the handsome office of Edmund C. Moy, the director of the Mint. Ask him to comment on the quote attributed to Albert Einstein: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results."

Point out that the future of money is relentlessly shifting away from physical cash.

Ask him if he has lost his blooming mind.

The Congress made me do it, he replies.

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What are these things, these shiny new objects with a cartoonish George Washington on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other that, like their two predecessor dollar coins, are not much bigger than quarters?

As money -- "anything generally accepted as a medium of exchange" -- dollar coins are marginal. Less than 1 percent of the $2.6 billion processed last year by Coinstar, the nation's largest self-service coin-counting-machine company, were dollars.

Buy some gas with the new presidential dollars at the Sunoco at Glebe Road and Washington Boulevard in Arlington, and Giash Uddin, the clerk, fingers the edges suspiciously. Have you gotten many people spending these? you ask. Three are in the cash drawer from the previous night, he says, but no way will he try to give them to anybody as change. "People don't like them," he says. "Back to the bank" is where they're going, he says.

Buy a coffee at Starbucks, and the coins are a conversation starter. The woman behind you, Suzette Matthews, a consultant for the Federal Aviation Administration, says, "They're pretty, aren't they?" They are indeed decorative. As the light varies, the colors they reflect range from light copper to bright steel. You'd never confuse these manganese brass items with silver or gold, however. One Arlington man, hefting some, muses, "I liked the Spanish 100-peseta coins. They felt like pirate booty."

These new dollars do not. Physically, they occupy an odd middle ground. Individually, they don't feel like "hard money," as coins were known before the material from which they were made was debased. These seem almost plastic to the touch -- not precious. Yet a roll of 25 is heavy -- it weighs more than a full beer can. Slung in a sock, it would be an effective weapon.

This is one reason that women, particularly, view coins as a nuisance. "I like things to be light and easy," says Jacqueline Shempp, 22, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing off her sleek little purse while waiting in a bank line. It is barely big enough to hold a phone and some credit cards. It doesn't have a place for coins.