Editorial The Loony’s not a lame duck

If you can believe recent press reports, Canadians are reacting with a considerable lack of enthusiasm to the new $1 dollar metal coin, introduced just a few months ago (early July, to be exact). One lady, interviewed in a television segment on the subject, said she didn’t care for the gold-colored coin because it looked like a “wrapped chocolate.”

The reports of disaffection with the coin, at any rate, are seen as just so much hogwash by people who should know, at the Royal Canadian Mint. According to a Mint spokesman, Michael Francis, the baby is in fact doing very well, thank you.

Surveys done by the Mint have shown a 79 per cent rate of public acceptance (certainly respectable), and a quite remarkable 97 per cent awareness level for the coin. Some 95 million of the coins are out now, and it’s expected that ultimately about 500 million of them will be in circulation by the time, in a year or so, the dollar bill is phased out.

We learn that nearly ten years ago, the United States launched a dollar coin, but it was a complete disaster, and now languishes only as something of a stockpile in bank vaults. “Our new coin,” says the Mint’s Francis, “is light years ahead of the U.S.”

We did our own mini-survey of the Canadian coin market, and found for example, that the Toronto Transit Commission, whose buses and streetcars take either the coin or a dollar bill, has found use of the metal buck rising steadily since its introduction in July. The rate of use has very nearly tripled since then, a TTC spokesman said.

We’re happy to see the dollar coin doing well, of course, because it represents a useful source of business both for Inco Ltd., which provides the nickel amalgam (about 95%) in the coin, and Sherritt Gordon, which produces its aureate coating (about 88% copper, 12% tin).

The “Loony” may not be the roaring success of the Maple Leaf gold coin, which is expected to easily be the gold coin market leader this year (ahead of the American Eagle by about 30,000 ounces) but we don’t believe it’s going to be a failure as was the American model.

We should soon be keeping dollar bills, as mementoes.