WASHINGTON – Most folks can correctly name George Washington as the nation’s first president. After that, things get tricky.
The U.S. Mint is hoping its new dollar coin series will help refresh some hazy memories about the names of Adams, Jefferson and the rest.
That could be a tall order, however, given the results of a poll the Mint commissioned to find out how much Americans know about their presidents.
According to the telephone poll conducted by the Gallup Organization last month, nearly all those questioned knew that Washington was the first president. However, only 30 percent could name Thomas Jefferson as the nation’s third president, and memories of the other presidents and where they ranked was even more limited.
Mint director Edmund Moy believes the new dollar coin series will be an antidote for that. And he can cite a good precedent. The Mint’s 50-state quarter program, the most popular coin series in history, has gotten 140 million people involved in collecting the quarters.
“My nieces and nephews know a lot more about geography than I did at their age and the state quarters are playing an instrumental role in that,” Moy told The Associated Press.
Moy released the survey results on Wednesday at an event staged to publicize the release of the new $1 Jefferson coin. That coin goes into circulation nationwide today. It also goes on sale on the Mint’s Web site at 9 a.m. PDT.
The Jefferson dollar follows the Washington coin, which was introduced in February, and the John Adams coin in May. The coin honoring James Madison enters circulation in November, and four more of the nation’s presidents will be honored every year in the order they served in the White House.
By having a rotating design on the new dollar coins, the Mint is hoping to keep interest high and avoid the famous flops of two previous dollar coins – the Susan B. Anthony, introduced in 1979, and the Sacagawea, introduced in 2000.
The presidential coins are the same size as the Sacagawea, slightly larger than a quarter, and also golden in color.
Skeptics, however, believe they will suffer the same fate unless the government gets rid of the $1 bill, something Congress has strongly opposed.
Moy insisted in the interview that the Mint has learned from the failures of the past dollar coins and that the new presidential series has a good chance for success, in part by finding niche markets such as vending machines, where a dollar coin will be more convenient than getting a pocketful of quarters in change.
“Vending machine companies are spending up to $1 billion a year in maintenance costs due to paper jams,” he said. “More use of dollar coins will mean less in maintenance costs.”
Moy said the program is off to a good start with 700 million presidential coins already ordered by the Federal Reserve to put into circulation in the first eight months, half the time it took the Sacagawea to reach that milestone.
There have been glitches, especially with customers having difficulty finding the coins at their local banks. Moy said that’s because of misunderstandings on the part of banks about how they can reorder coins if they run out.
Moy has appointed a Mint task force to develop solutions to the distribution problems, and he predicts 80 percent to 100 percent of all banks will have the new Jefferson coin this week.
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