My wife and I have been a big fan of the State Quarter program that the US government put into place in 1999 (we finally get my state’s quarter this year – TEXAS!). Anyway, there was that dollar coin introduced in 2000, which again failed to make much of a splash – I don’t think a dollar coin can succeed here unless the paper dollar is done away with at the same time; which is unlikely to happen.

Finally, what is probably not known is that they’re also printing new nickels this year. There’s two designs – one is to go into distribution this month, and the other “later in the year”. You can read about the new coin design by clicking here.

This will be cool, I like all this new versions of the coins. There was talk that when the quarter program is finished, they’re going to do the territories (Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico). That would be cool. Actually, I’d like to see them do this a second time, take a second run through the states on another coin. Perhaps the dollar coin? That might be a way to get people interested in it.