Why was the Susan B. Anthony coin stopped?

Answer 1

SBA's were struck for circulation in 1979 and 1980. When it became apparent that the design was severely flawed, minting was discontinued except for coins made for proof and uncirculated sets in 1981.

However, supplies of dollar coins started to run out in the late 1990s before Sacagawea dollars could be designed and minted. Inflation and use in transit systems and vending machines had increased demand, so there was one last run of SBA's made in 1999.

Yes, this is a kind of long-winded answer but as you see the situation is a bit more complicated than one might expect.

Answer 2

The Susan B. Anthony dollar coin was dropped for the Sacajawea dollar coin, and more recently for the Presidents series of dollar coins. The Anthony dollar was arguably one of the least successful coins in American history. Its creation and design amounted to a long list of mistakes, oversights, and bureaucratic bungling.

When it became clear that the large-size Eisenhower dollar was too cumbersome to circulate effectively the Mint started a program to design a smaller and more practical replacement. The original proposal was for a distinctive-looking coin with an image of Miss Liberty on the front and a soaring eagle on the back. In addition, it was to have a smooth edge with 11 sides rather than a circular edge with reeding (the little grooves on dimes, quarters, and halves).

Unfortunately the proposal immediately fell victim to meddling from all sides.

> The Mint's engineers contended that they could not strike a multi-sided coin, despite the fact that many other countries were doing exactly that and had been for decades. The edge was redesigned to be round and reeded, just like other coins.

> A number of womens' groups seized on the Miss Liberty design as too generic, and lobbied heavily for the depiction of an actual person. (To put things in perspective, the 1970s were still not an era of equality and there were many other protests over other rights issues.) There was no time to open the redesign to a competition and everyone somehow coalesced around Ms. Anthony. She was by all accounts a severe-looking person at best and Frank Gasparro, the Mint's chief engraver, hurriedly worked from a particularly unflattering portrait of her. The result was one of the least visually appealing coins since the "frightened Liberty" cent of 1793.

> The coin's size and weight specification was contracted out to a consulting firm that had never previously worked with coin designs. They compared possible specifications to many foreign coins to avoid substitution, but incredibly they NEVER thought to check whether their choice might be too similar to any current U.S. coins! What they decided on was almost exactly the same size and weight as the familiar quarter.

> The Mint failed to perform usability testing of the new design. By contrast, when the UK introduced a new 20-pence coin at roughly the same time they minted sample coins of various sizes and designs, then made "dry run" tests using actual stores. During off-hours regular staff was brought in and people portraying customers used the new coins to make "purchases". Each design was then evaluated for ease and accuracy of use, and the final choice was an immediate success.

The result of these failures was that Anthony dollars were rejected due to their appearance, or because so many were accidentally mixed up with quarters when making change. The only part of the economy that found them useful was mass transit. The coins had almost no problems being used in fareboxes while dollar bills tended to jam or tear.

Answer 3

It failed because the size was to close to that of a quarter and many people confused it with quarters,