NEW YORK -- The U.S. Mint rolled out its newest $1 coin at Grand Central Terminal on Thursday at an event replete with marching music and a costumed George Washington re-enactor.
As commuters bustled past on their way to work, crowds of collectors and the curious lined up at the famous station's cavernous, chandelier-adorned Vanderbilt Hall to exchange their paper money for the new coins.
"I think it's cool because we get to see a coin with the first president on it," said 7-year-old Jack Garbus, an avid coin collector and second-grader from Valhalla, N.Y. who was taking advantage of a school snow delay to be at the event.
Mint Director Edmund C. Moy presided over a ceremony complete with school children wearing colonial-style hats and wigs to kick off the coin exchange at Grand Central.
Moy stressed the educational value of the new dollar, which the Mint believes can be a big success. He also showed off its practicality by putting it into a parking meter set up on stage and getting a receipt.
"It all comes back to choice. That's what the new presidential $1 coin gives Americans," Moy said. "More choice with their currency."
The new coin is going into circulation around the country just in time for next week's celebration of the first president's birthday.
"This is quite interesting because currency was not standardized before the Constitution," said the white-pony-tailed re-enactor at Grand Central, who insisted on identifying himself only as George Washington and wore a black 18th century business suit with long coat, short pants and black stockings.
"George" _ or should that be "Mister President"? _ wondered aloud whether he should be pictured on money at all, since that was a practice of the King of England.
The Mint is making sure the coins, which are golden in color and slightly larger and thicker than a quarter, will be widely available.
So far the Federal Reserve, the Mint's distribution agent, has placed orders for 300 million of the Washington coins. Many have already been delivered to commercial banks under orders not to begin selling them until Thursday.
Leon Mathiez, 53, of Queens, who does administrative work at a brokerage house, snapped up $100 worth of the new coins. The Mint is hoping to get the coins into circulation, and Mathiez said they look durable. But he'll save his for his collection.
"When I grew up, times were hard. You learned how to hang onto a dollar," he said.
The design on the coin will change every three months, featuring a new president in the order in which they served, an idea modeled after the wildly successful 50-state quarter program. More than 125 million collectors participate in the quarter program.
Coin experts, however, questioned whether the rotating designs will be enough to allow the new presidential $1 coin to succeed where the Susan B. Anthony dollar, introduced in 1979, and the Sacagawea dollar, introduced in 2000, failed.
"I don't know of any country that has successfully introduced the equivalent of a dollar coin without getting rid of the corresponding paper unit," said Douglas Mudd, author of a new book on the history of money, "All the Money in the World."
Moy said Congress made the decision to keep the dollar bill as part of new dollar coin legislation in 2005.
After Washington, the presidents honored this year will be John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The program is scheduled to run into 2016. A president must have been dead at least two years to appear on a coin.
