“It’s not a custom with me to keep money to look at.” &045; George Washington

The U.S. Mint may soon be at it again. Coin collectors have been complaining that our pocket change is boring to look at and is in dire need of a face-lift.

A Mint task force has recommended introducing a new nickel in 2003, a dime in 2004, a half-dollar in 2005 and a penny in 2006. As of now, no designs have been finalized, but some ideas have included commemorating the Lewis and Clark expedition, endangered species, other presidents, and Nobel Prize winners.

Those ideas certainly have merit, but I think they lack imagination. I say if we’re updating our money, we should take it further and change more than the images on the coins.

Perhaps the most overdue change is the shape of our coins. They could really use some imagination here and come up with something cool. Squares would be a start, but one could get a better idea by looking at a bowl of Lucky Charms. We could have star-shaped nickels, diamond-shaped dimes, moon shaped half-dollars and clover-shaped pennies. We could even drill a hole in the middle &045; and not a round one, either. It would have to be triangular. An octagon would be kind of cool, too.

Another idea in changing the shape would be to start minting interlocking coins, so the coins would fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They could even form a picture. How about a “Route 66” sign, since the four coins together would total 66 cents? It’s too bad the people designing the state quarters didn’t think of this. They could have made an entire map of the U.S., plus two extra quarters for Alaska and Hawaii.

The next thing that should be changed is the size of coins. For starters, I think the higher the denomination, the larger the coin should be. It would be neat to see coins ranging in size from the diameter of a compact disc for the half-dollar, to the diameter of a match head for the penny. Incidentally, coins would be sized according to denomination right now if it wasn’t for that troublemaker dime. It’s about the same size as the penny &045; slightly smaller, actually. On top of that, it is also the thinnest of the coins. Just what is the dime trying to pull?

Next, we could do something that should have been done when they redesigned the currency: Add color! Our coins right now have boring colors, but I have a few suggestions to jazz them up a bit.

One idea has actually already been done &045; coloring in the pictures on the coins. The U.S. Mint didn’t do this, though. I think it was the Franklin Mint. I saw a colored-in state quarter advertised in Parade magazine one Sunday morning. The funny thing is that when we do it, it’s called defacing money and is a felony. When the Franklin Mint does it, it’s called a collector’s item and is worth $6.95.

I think we could do something cooler than just coloring in the picture. How about using Day-Glo colors, like neon yellow, green, orange and blue? Or, maybe the Mint could issue everyone a set of oil paints and have paint-by-the-numbers images on every coin. They would have to change the image every now and then; otherwise people would get bored with it. An even better one would be to mint all the coins in three colors: red, white and blue.

I have no ideas for redesigning the images on the coins. I think the suggestions I’ve already made would make them interesting enough. Incidentally, putting other presidents on the coins is hardly an original idea. There was already a set of coins minted in the ’70s featuring all the presidents to that point. They were only available in boxes of cereal.

I will end this column with my theory as to why the collectors may want the coins redesigned. At one time, the Mint produced wheat pennies, buffalo nickels, Mercury dimes and silver quarters. These are now highly sought after. It is safe to assume that coin collectors have an abundance of current quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, most likely in mint condition. What do you suppose might happen to the value of their collections once the current designs are no longer being produced?

Dustin Petersen is an Albert Lea resident. His column appears Mondays.