Passing The Buck

The Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, once the unloved stepsister of American money, is making a comeback. Eighteen years after the U.S. Mint stopped turning out the once-unpopular coins and just months before its gussied-up younger cousin featuring Shoshone Indian guide Sacajawea’s image makes its debut heavy demand for Susan B’s in vending machines and subways has exhausted the supply. So the U.S. Mint decided Thursday to do a final 1999 encore run of a still-to-be-determined number of Susan B. Anthony coins. The government struck 857 million coins with the 19th-century suffragette on the face from 1979 to 1981, but it found itself stuck with 550 million when production ended.