A new day, a new dollar, but in vending machines?

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One day soon, consumers might not think twice about using a Franklin Pierce or Martin Van Buren presidential dollar coin, but it remains to be seen whether those coins will be embraced by the vending industry.

Starting Thursday with the official release of the George Washington presidential $1 coin, the U.S. Mint will begin a nine-year program modeled after the successful state quarter campaign. The goal is to increase the use of dollar coins after earlier versions failed to catch on with the public.

The U.S. Mint will release four presidential coins a year, in order of their terms. The final scheduled coin is the Richard M. Nixon presidential dollar set to be released in 2016.

The new presidential coins will be the same dimensions as the Sacagawea golden dollar, which means vending machines that accept the golden dollar can take the new ones as well.

Getting the multibillion-dollar vending industry on-board has been a priority for the U.S. Mint. Spokesman Michael White said the Mint has been working with vending associations and operators to get the word out about the new program.

According to the National Automatic Merchandise Association, the vending machine business is comprised of more than 8,000 companies nationwide. Altogether, the association estimates industry sales range from $21billion to more than $38 billion.

For its part, the group has backed the dollar coin programs, and is doing so again with the new presidential coins.

“We’ve been trying to work with the dollar coins since the Susan B. Anthony was released,” association Director of Government Affairs Brian Allen said. “We look at accepting dollar coins as an advance, it’s convenient for customers, if you’ve ever used a vending machine and tried to stuff a rumpled dollar bill you can see the appeal of the dollar coin.”

Whether individual vendors decide to reconfigure their machines can come down to a number of factors. Older machines need to be retrofitted to accept the coins, at costs ranging from a few hundred dollars to more than $600 per machine. Newer machines with the capability to take the coins still have to be configured to do so, and operators may not be willing to make that investment if there is not enough demand to warrant the change.

Companies with machines already set up to accept the dollar coins expect little to change. Canteen Commissary, a division of Canteen Corp., operates about 5,000 machines in the Baltimore area from its Linthicum location. Canteen Support Service Manager Michael Beasley said the majority of the machines accept dollar coins, and have already been tested to make sure they will work.

“It should have no real impact. About 80 to 90 percent of our machines already accept the dollar coins,” Beasley said. “We started setting them up that way when they released the other coins, and they’ve been that way ever since.”

Even though they have accepted the coins for years, Beasley said they account for a fraction of the company’s transactions.

“That’s not a lot really, considering the change we get,” he said. “It seems like most people just don’t want them, or want to fool with them.”

The historical lack of demand for machines accepting dollar coins is why Parkville-based Towson Vending is withholding a wholesale change to its existing machines. Owner Bob Frankis said of his estimated 900 vending machines, pinball games and video games, none are set up to accept the dollar coins.

“The industry as a whole had a big push to put dollar coin acceptors into machines because they believed it would help revenue,” Frankis said. “I’m not sure why, but ended up being a big flop. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s going to be used.”

Frankis said he did not see the need in retrofitting his machines to accept dollar coins. He said at a cost of up to $600 per vending machine, he did not see the demand there to warrant the expense.

“If you have a hundred or a thousand machines, it wouldn’t be beneficial to upgrade the machines,” Frankis said. “The only way the industry side will do it is if the coins are a huge success and their use becomes mainstream.”