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Safeway to Safeway Inc. stores, including the 18 supermarkets in Hawaii, will be offering the Sacagawea dollar coins as change in an effort to boost circulation of the one-year-old, gold-colored coin.
circulate Sacagawea
dollar coins
The currency features a
Shoshone Indian who
accompanied explorers
Lewis and ClarkFrom staff and wire reports
The 1,467 stores nationally, including the Safeway-owned Vons, Tom Thumb and Carrs outlets on the mainland, should all have the coins in their cash registers tomorrow and some already have them, Safeway officials said.
U.S. Mint Director Jay Johnson is scheduled to join senior Safeway officials in San Francisco tomorrow to announce the new circulation plan.
Safeway's Hawaii stores don't yet have the coins but the company's district office said they are expected soon and, when they do come in, the stores will post signs to alert their customers.
Debra Lambert, a spokeswoman at Safeway's headquarters in Pleasanton, Calif., said the stores will pass out the coins on an ongoing basis and the promotion is not just a one-shot effort.
Many people haven't seen the golden-colored coins except in newspaper and TV ads.
Even though banks say they carry a ready supply, the coins are not in widespread use with retailers.
Banks and post offices in Hawaii and on the mainland have been issuing them as change, but they are not in wide circulation.
The Wall Street Journal said 700 million of the coins are supposedly in circulation but as many as 600 million are being held by collectors. The paper said U.S. Mint officials believe consumers have already hoarded all the Sacagaweas they want and introducing a batch of the new coins at one of the nation's biggest food and drug retailers will make a difference.
The Mint says it has produced about 1.2 billion of the coins, featuring Sacagawea, a Shoshone Indian who accompanied explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark when they trekked across the continent two centuries ago.
The Mint has taken other steps to try to get the coins into people's hands. When the Sacagaweas debuted, the Mint supplied retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. with around 100 million to offer to customers when making change. It also conducted a $40 million dollar advertising blitz in which a hip George Washington urges people to use them.
The Sacagawea replaced the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, which is no longer in production but still circulates. Many people complained the Susan B. Anthony dollar was too easily mistaken for a quarter because of its look and feel.
Star-Bulletin reporter Russ Lynch and
the Associated Press contributed to this report.