PHOENIX, Feb. 15, 2007 — Two out of three Americans polled at http://www.swissamerica.com say that they believe the new presidential one-dollar coins released today are a "great waste of taxpayer money."
Fifteen percent say they will collect the new $1 coins, 19 percent say they will use the coins for daily transactions and 66 percent say the new coins are a great waste of money, according to this non-scientific two-day poll of over 800 readers.
One reader commented, "Frankly, those new coins, gold plated or not, have no intrinsic value; they are just a way to snag people who are not well versed in coins or monetary value into thinking they have something."
The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 authorized the new coin series debuting today with the George Washington dollar. Other recent attempts at producing a $1 coin, such as the Eisenhower, Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea, were doomed to fail when $1 coins were deemed obscure or unnecessary.
Following the success of the state quarter program, which got an estimated 140 million Americans interested in coin collecting, the Mint then turned its attention to the nation's presidents and will be issuing four presidential $1 coins a year through 2016. The new coins are only slightly larger than a quarter, which in the cases of the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollars led to some confusion.
According to Swissamerica.com CEO Craig R. Smith, "I welcome the new dollar coins but remain skeptical that Americans will use them in mass unless the government decided to stop printing the dollar bills, offering us no choice but the $1 coin. Given the ongoing decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, perhaps we should replace $1 dollar bills with $2 bills."
"From a numismatic perspective, the new coins may be of educational value to our children to remind them of our great past presidents. But from an investment perspective, these coins will never achieve the status of pre-1933 U.S. gold coins because after all they are made of base metals, not precious metals," Mr. Smith added.
"The larger issue is that our dollars have become dimes in buying power over the last two generations. Lest we forget a 'dollar' was originally a weight measurement of gold or silver. Measured in gold, the dollar has lost over half its buying power just in the last six years," says Swissamerica.com's Real Money Perspectives editor David Bradshaw.
In addition to the new presidential dollar designed for circulation, the U.S. Mint also hopes to appeal to Americans in search of gold bullion coinage, by releasing the new "Nation's First Spouses" which are one-half ounce gold coins (.999 pure, face value $10) beginning in 2007 with Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson's Liberty and Dolley Madison.
For more information visit http://www.swissamerica.com. For media interviews with Mr. Smith, call Holly Smith at (800) 950-2428 or email Email.