Remember the Susan B Anthony dollar coins that the US Treasury rolled out back in 1979? Nice idea having a woman from US history on our currency for the first time. Yep. But there was something very wrong with the design:
It was the same size as a quarter.
How many of these coins did I accidentally confuse with two-bits and drop into a coin-op of Ms. Pac-Man? Not many, cause these suckers were dispatched by public opinion poste haste. I've probably only ever seen them three or four times in my life. They were summarily rejected.
Then came the Sacajawea dollar in 2000. This was going to fix all the problems with the Susan B coin. It was gold... and had smooth edges instead of ridged. And it was a bit heavier than the Susan B, and...
... it was the same size as a quarter.
Complete catastrophe. Nobody used the Sac dollar. The post office tried to pawn these off on my every time I bought stamps from the automated machine, and I just couldn't wait to get rid of them. Why would I want to carry a chunk of ambiguous metal in my pocket when I could have a light crispy goodness of GW bill in my wallet?
So I can't tell you how excited I was to learn that about the brand-new 2007 dollar-coin design that rolled out this morning in New York. It's awesome - it's gold and they are going to rotate each of the presidents with each progressive minting. Oh, and the best part is that...
... it's the same size as a quarter.
WTF? Just look at GW's face on that coin -- he's pissed about this, too. He's just as sick as we are about the whole quarter-confusion thing. It's making the poor guy schizophrenic being on the dollar and the quarter.
So, I say bring back the old Eisenhower silver dollars.
Ike was cool. Ike dollars were heavy.
Ike dollars were the Hungry-Man's Dinner of coinage.
Ike dollars were real, ultimate power
He looks like Julius frickin' Caesar, minus the olive branch. Sweet. And you could really do some damage if you pegged someone from across the room with one.
Errrr....not that I'd know. 
Comments (1)
I looooove sac dollars. More importantly, my kids love them because they look like pirate booty. The problem is that they age really poorly and soon look like something that might have been recovered under a pier and from within a rotting shark carcass a la Jaws.
The Australians do it right. The dollar and two dollar coins are tiny. They make pocket change worthwhile. We need coins like that. We used to make them in the 1800's. Bring back the tiny!
Posted by Edubya | February 16, 2007 8:25 AM
Posted on February 16, 2007 08:25