If you're one of the Wal-Mart shoppers who received a new Sacagawea dollar coin in change this week, congratulations, you've got the hottest ticket in town -- at least through the month.
They couldn't give the old Susan B. Anthony dollar coins away, but the new "golden dollar" bearing the image of Lewis and Clark's legendary Shoshone Indian guide is once again showing the U.S. government the way . . . to market."The response from consumers has been incredible," said David Hogan, manager of the Fort Union Wal-Mart in Midvale. "They're all gone."
Gone are the 65,000 new dollar coins received by the five Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in the Salt Lake area last week under a special arrangement with the U.S. Mint.
They've been scooped up by local shoppers who have embraced Sacagawea as strongly as they shunned Susan when her coin was issued 20 years ago.
These days, the only place you can find a Susan B. is at the post office, where stamp vending machines give them in change whether you want them or not.
Not so Sacagawea. Wal-Mart patrons had the option of accepting the new coins or dollar bills, but virtually everyone took the coins and asked for more.
"There's no question she's been getting a very warm reception," said Michael White, spokesman for the U.S. Mint in Washington, D.C.
White told the Deseret News that while the Anthony coin was never able to penetrate retail cash drawers in two decades of trying, Sacagawea is being embraced like Beanie Babies and Pokémon.
That's because the mint learned from its past failure with Anthony, a pioneer in women's suffrage. Instead of sending the new coin to banks, they struck an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, to offer the coin directly to shoppers as an alternative to dollar bills.
It's called marketing, and while business does it all the time, it's something new for the government.
According to Hogan of the Fort Union Wal-Mart, the local stores received their first shipment of golden dollars on Jan. 28 -- some stores got 10,000 and others 15,000 -- and began giving them out as change on Sunday. By Tuesday all 60,000 had been snapped up.
Hogan said he expects the next shipment between Monday and Thursday of next week and a third between Feb. 22-25. At the end of the month, Wal-Mart's exclusive deal expires, and the coins will become available in other stores and banks. The mint plans to produce 1 billion of the coins this year.
The mint really did its homework with Sacagawea. It's a more beautiful coin than the Anthony with its golden color (a manganese brass alloy) and smooth edge (which means it will be less likely to be confused with a quarter.) And the portrait of Sacagawea, carrying a baby on her back, is more appealing than Anthony's stern visage. The reverse (tails) of the coin depicts a bald eagle in flight and 17 stars, one for each of the states at the time of Lewis and Clark's expedition.
But while it looks nothing like the Anthony coin, it has the same "electromagnetic signature," meaning it will work in existing vending machines with no retrofitting, much to the relief of that industry.
Moreover, traditionalists need not fret. White assures that the mint has no plans to stop printing dollar bills. As usual, 6 billion George Washingtons will come off the presses this year, six times the number of Sacagawea mintings.