Barbara Hagenbaugh
USA Today
New presidential $1 coins gleam after coming out of the presses at the U.S. Mint iin Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA — In most government buildings, workers and visitors have to walk through metal detectors on their way in.
While that’s also the case at the Philadelphia Mint, the biggest scrutiny comes when it’s time to leave the building. Highly sensitive metal detectors scan people and their items for any coins. The smallest amount of metal, even underwire in bras, can set off the buzzer, leading to additional searches.
It’s a long-standing practice at the Philadelphia Mint, where employees are not allowed to bring in coins and have special debit cards for vending machines.
But these days, the stakes are even higher. That’s because the Mint is currently producing the first batch in a set of presidential dollars, cranking out $2 million to $3 million of the sparkling, gold-colored coins each day. Take out a few hundred pennies, or even quarters, and not too much is lost. Walk out the door with a few hundred dollar coins, and someone could afford a nice TV.
Some of the presidential dollars are leaving the Mints in Philadelphia and Denver, where they are also being produced, for delivery to Federal Reserve banks ahead of their Feb. 15 launch. So far, Fed banks, which distribute coins to private bank branches, have ordered more than 300 million of the first coin. That compares with 1.3 billion Sacagawea dollar coins produced in 2000, the first year of that unsuccessful program.
The latest dollar-coin program will feature a former president on the heads side, starting with George Washington, and progressing in the order in which they served. Presidents must be deceased at least two years to appear on the coins. Four coins will be released each year, similar to the enormously popular state quarter program, which has turned millions of Americans into coin collectors.
A lot is at stake for the government. Previous efforts to get the public to use dollar coins have failed. About $110 million of Sacagawea dollar coins are in storage. Except for collectors’ sets, they have not been minted since March 2002, a little more than two years after they were introduced with much fanfare.
Mint officials say the new coins’ designs will be popular with both collectors and consumers.
“It’s really going to stimulate the dollar,” says John Mercanti, head of engraving at the Philadelphia Mint, which takes up a city block across the street from Ben Franklin’s burial plot. “Our designs are far more dynamic and far more spectacular than they have been at any time in the past,” says Mercanti, who has worked at the Philadelphia Mint for 34 years.
Sound of money-making
Walking through the Mint, you’d think you were in any other factory, surrounded by machinery, forklifts and signs encouraging workers to wear safety goggles.
Except for one thing: the sound, an unmistakable jingle-jangle of millions of coins being stamped out of long sheets of metal weighing as much as 10,000 pounds each, then rolling down conveyers. It’s as if every slot machine in a Las Vegas casino were paying out at the same time.
The Philadelphia Mint has stepped up production to meet demand. Its 160 factory workers are rotating on eight-hour shifts — 24 hours a day, often seven days a week.
When Congress ordered the new dollar-coin program, it created several challenges. Perhaps the biggest was that the legislation required the phrases “E Pluribus Unum” and “In God We Trust,” along with the year and the mint location, to appear in recessed letters on the edges, rather than the faces, of the coins. Such lettering allows for a larger portrait, draws attention to the wording and provides something different for coin collectors.
That created a headache for the engineers and others trying to figure out how to mass-produce the coins, says Richard Robidoux, plant manager at the Philadelphia Mint. Edge lettering hasn’t been used on a coin since 1932, so Mint officials didn’t have experience manufacturing coins with that feature and didn’t own machinery that inscribes on the edges of coins.
A real challenge was coming up with a process to produce the coins quickly. “It’s one thing to make it work, it’s another thing to make it work 3 million times a day,” Robidoux says.
A circular solution
The Mint figured out how to make it work, with an interesting twist. Because the coins are fed through an edge-lettering machine a thousand coins a minute at the end of the minting process, the lettering’s placement on the edges will be different from coin to coin.
Not all the inscriptions are off the faces of the coins. “United States of America” and “$1” appears on the tails side, while the president’s name and years of service are on the heads side. Artists say removing some of the writing gave them more space for design.
From their small cubicles tucked in a corner of the Philadelphia Mint, artists Don Everhart and Joe Menna say they are excited to see their designs stamped onto millions of coins. Everhart designed the back of the coins, featuring the Statue of Liberty, which will be constant throughout the life of the program. Menna designed the front of the George Washington coin.
Everhart, 57, and Menna, 36, have backgrounds in sculpting. Menna studied in St. Petersburg, Russia, under teachers who studied with the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Both say they’re proud to see their work mass-produced into something people will use daily.
“That’s the most rewarding part of the job,” says Everhart, who also designed the state quarters for Nevada, California and Montana.
“I could end my career here tomorrow and have something that would stick me in the history books,” Menna says.
