James Felton said the dollar coins released by the United States Mint starting in 2007 have not seen much use for several reasons.

“They get pretty heavy in the pockets,” the chairman of finance and law said. “They would have to quit making the paper bills (for the coins to be used more).”

The United States Mint began producing gold-colored dollar coins in 2007 featuring the United States presidents. The program will release four different coins each year, going in the order in which the presidents served. The coin depicting Martin Van Buren, the eighth president, was released Thursday.

The Mint released the coins in an order to save money on creating dollar bills, according to a Nov. 15 story in the Muskegon Chronicle. If dollar coins were used in place of dollar bills, the savings to the Mint would be $522.2 million, the newspaper reported.

Grand Rapids has been selected by the Mint as a city to encourage businesses and consumers to use the coins. Other cities involved with the program include Austin, Texas; Portland, Ore.; and Charlotte, N.C.

While these cities are involved with heavily marketing the coins, Mount Pleasant bankers said they have not seen an increase in consumer use of the coins.

“They’re not very popular with our customers,” said Janelle Pretzer, a customer sales representative at Independent Bank, 623 Washington Ave. “We can sit on $1,000 of them for months.”

Pretzer said customers who do ask for the dollar coins are requesting them simply for the novelty of owning them and are not planning on spending them. Coin collectors are also still hunting for the new state quarter series, which depicts images from each of the 50 states. The last quarter, depicting Hawaii, was recently released.

“The (state) quarters are the big products everyone wants, not the dollar coins,” she said.

The United States Mint saw coin collectors hoarding the Sacajawea gold dollar coins from 2000 to 2002, causing the Mint to cease production, the Chronicle reported.

Tammy Kenny, a teller supervisor at Isabella Bank, 139 E. Broadway St., said businesses and banks need to accommodate the coins before they can be widely circulated.

“The drawers for money don’t have a spot for dollar coins,” she said. “If we started incorporating those, (they would be used).”

Kenny said Isabella Bank does not see many people asking for rolls of the dollar coins. When they do, it’s usually for collecting purpose, she said.

Although Felton agreed the dollar coins could save the Mint money on production costs, he believes a larger-denomination coin would have been a better solution.

“I wish they would have made a $5 coin or a $2 coin,” he said. “Maybe a $2 coin or $5 coin, that wouldn’t be too bad.”

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E-mail the author: David Veselenak