Philip Diehl

Six o'clock today.

Okay, seniorage.

It's really a simple concept.

And that is like any product in business.

You hope to produce it at a cost that is less than what you sell it for.

And when you do that with coins, that's called seniorage.

The Federal Reserve, they pay us the face value of the coin, and then those coins are distributed to the regional Federal Reserve banks.

And the regional Federal Reserve banks then take orders from the banking system in the United States, and the coins are delivered to the banks.

And that coin might have circulated for 30 years.

And so for us, the mint, that coin is basically like a 30-year long-term loan, interest-free.

And so when I was director of the Met 30 years ago, I was the first Met director to recommend the elimination of the penny.

And it was long overdue then.

And after a couple of years, I started thinking about whether or not that was possible.

And I became convinced we could do it.

And so I'm sort of famous there for having created the 50 state quarters program.

I said, now, this has tremendous education potential.

Each one of the 50 states will have designs emblematic of the state.

People in the state and students will become excited about it.

That's boring.

We're not teaching anybody anything.