THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 23, 1994 TAG: 9407230007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
From the legal-tender front, we've recently received two bits of news. Both hold interest, for sure. One holds promise, too, and the other might.
We hear, for one thing, that the Treasury may change the way much of our paper money looks. Plans are well along for revisions designed to foil the sophisticated counterfeiters in this age of sophisticated copying devices.
Subtle things would be done to the graphics, the inks and the paper to prevent duplication. And the new money would be most dramatically changed by the enlargement of the central portrait on each bill, and its shift to the side (already seen in some other countries' money).
This looks like a change the public can accept without too much anguish over the break with the past. Some of us can remember when U.S. bills were sharply pared in size, without much in the way of shrinking pains for the general public.
And surely a more secure currency, through high-tech modification now, is something to applaud.
Also worth applauding, tentatively at least, is the easing of the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin back into the public money stream, from which it virtually disappeared almost as soon as it stuck in its toe some 15 years ago.
The comeback is being spurred, it seems, by the post office. New postal vending machines can accept $10 and $20 bills, and give in change, among other coins, the so-called Suzy Bs. This could mean that increasing numbers of the 496.5 million of them out here among the people somewhere (I know where five of them are), will be showing up in daily exchange. Demand may even develop for some of the 297.5 million which never got into circulation.
The pace of actual use may now accelerate as more and more citizens become accustomed to these coins and overcome the confusion that has tended to exist between them and our similarly sized quarters or half-dollars.
Alack, something may still work against full acceptance: that appearance of having 11 flats around the edge, while in reality the piece is smoothly circular and the polygonic design merely pressed into the faces of the coin. This means that when you move a finger around the edge of a Suzy B without looking, it feels no different from the rounded edge of a quarter.
The Canadians on the other hand, when they came out with a small and successful dollar coin (just about the same size as the Susan B. Anthony) did fashion 11 actual flats around the rim, in addition to giving this coin (called the Looney, after the loon imprinted on one side) a distinctive brass-gold finish.
Now if we in the United States wanted to pull off a real numismatic rescue bits of metal from certain metal discs . . . start recalling those stashed-away Susans . . . .
Nah! MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. by CNB