Sacagawea dollar coin faltering

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Sacagawea helped Lewis and Clark find their way to the Pacific Ocean, but she’s having trouble finding her own way into the nation’s cash registers.

The image of the Shoshone Indian, Sacagawea, is featured on the struggling dollar coin that was launched with great fanfare and a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz just more than two years ago. It was supposed to be jingling in pockets and used in everyday transactions across the country by now.

Instead, millions of the golden-colored dollar coins have piled up in dark bank vaults because there hasn’t been much demand. The Mint has temporarily stopped making new Sacagaweas for circulation. But it is producing some for collectors.

Many people have never touched one.

“My contention is this is a failure,” declared Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who said he has never received a Sacagawea dollar coin in change.

Dorgan, chairman of the Appropriation Committee’s treasury and general government subcommittee, held a hearing Friday to see what might be done to turn the situation around. Dorgan – who noted that Sacagawea also was a North Dakotan – likes the coin and wants to see it thrive.

But banks say there hasn’t been much demand for the coins by retailers and other businesses. Retailers and businesses say there hasn’t been much demand from their customers.

Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore, who appeared at Friday’s hearing, believes there are a number of reasons the coin is struggling.

People who receive the coins as change keep them and don’t spend them. Retailers say they don’t have room in their cash registers for the coins. And, businesses that want Sacagaweas sometimes have trouble getting them, she said. Fore blamed that on the Federal Reserve – the supplier of cash to the nation’s banks – saying it mixes Sacagaweas coins with their unpopular predecessor the Susan. B. Anthony coins when filling orders.

The Sacagawea coins do get used to buy snacks from vending machines, to tip people, and in cases where they are accepted, to feed parking meters, pay tolls and bus fares. And, people like to buy them for gifts.

Nonetheless, the Mint ended fiscal year 2001 with about 324 million Sacagawea dollar coins in storage, according to a report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general.