Presidential dollar coins
Presidential dollar coins are a series of United States dollar coins with engravings of relief portraits of U.S. presidents on the obverse and the Statue of Liberty on the reverse.
From 2007 to 2011, presidential dollar coins were minted for circulation in large numbers, resulting in an ample stockpile of unused $1 coins. From 2012 to 2016, new coins in the series were minted only for collectors. A new coin was released on December 4, 2020, to honor George H. W. Bush, who died after the original program ended.
Legislative history
, the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, was introduced on May 17, 2005, by Senator John E. Sununu with over 70 cosponsors. It was reported favorably out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs without amendment on July 29, 2005. The Senate passed it with a technical amendment, by unanimous consent on November 18, 2005. The House of Representatives passed it on December 13, 2005. The enrolled bill was presented to president George W. Bush on December 15, 2005, and he signed it into law on December 22, 2005.Program details
The program began on January 1, 2007, and, like the 50 State quarters program, was not scheduled to end until every eligible subject was honored. The program was to issue coins featuring each of four presidents per year on the obverse, issuing one for three months before moving on to the next president in chronological order by term in office. To be eligible, a president must have been deceased for at least two years prior to the time of minting. The United States Mint called it the Presidential $1 Coin Program.The reverse of the coins bears the Statue of Liberty, the inscription "$1" and the inscription "United States of America" in all caps, in the font ITC Benguiat. Inscribed along the edge of the coin is the year of minting or issuance of the coin, the mint mark, 13 stars, and also the legend E Pluribus Unum in the following arrangement: ; before 2009, the national motto "In God We Trust" was also part of the edge lettering. The word "Liberty" is absent from the coin altogether, since the decision was made that the image of the Statue of Liberty on the reverse of the coin was sufficient to convey the message of liberty. The text of the act does not specify the color of the coins, but per the U.S. Mint "the specifications will be identical to those used for the current Golden dollar". The George Washington $1 coin was first available to the public on February 15, 2007, in honor of Washington's Birthday, which was observed on February 19.
This marked the first time since the St. Gaudens Double Eagle that the United States had issued a coin with edge lettering for circulation. Edge-lettered coins date back to the 1790s. The process was started to discourage the shaving of gold coin edges, a practice which was used to cheat payees. In December 2007, Congress passed, moving "In God We Trust" to either the obverse or reverse of the coins.
This is the same bill that created a program that included quarters for Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.
The act had been introduced because of the failure of the Sacagawea $1 coin to gain widespread circulation in the United States. The act sympathized with the need of the nation's private sector for a $1 coin, and expected that the appeal of changing the design would increase the public demand for new coins, as the public generally responded well to the state quarter program. The program was also intended to help educate the public about the nation's presidents and their history. In case the coins did not catch on with the general public, then the mint leaders hoped that collectors would be as interested in the dollars as they were with the state quarters, which generated about $6.3 billion in seigniorage between January 1999 and December 2008.
Unlike the state quarter program and the Westward Journey nickel series, which suspended the issuance of the current design during those programs, the act directed the Mint to continue to issue Sacagawea dollar coins during the presidential series. The law states that at least one in three issued dollars must be a Sacagawea dollar. Furthermore, the Sacagawea design was required to continue after the presidential coin program ended. These requirements were added at the behest of the North Dakota congressional delegation to ensure that Sacagawea, whom North Dakotans consider to be one of their own, ultimately remains on the dollar coin.
However, Federal Reserve officials indicated to Congress that "if the Presidential $1 Coin Program does not stimulate substantial transactional demand for dollar coins, the requirement that the Mint nonetheless produce Sacagawea dollars would result in costs to the taxpayer without any offsetting benefits." In that event, the Federal Reserve indicated that it would "strongly recommend that Congress reassess the one-third requirement." The one-third requirement was later changed to one-fifth by the Native American $1 Coin Act, passed on September 20, 2007.
Previous versions of the act called for removing from circulation dollar coins issued before the Sacagawea dollar, most notably the Susan B. Anthony dollar, but the version of the act which became law merely directs the Secretary of the Treasury to study the matter and report back to Congress. The act required federal government agencies, businesses operating on federal property, and federally funded transit systems to accept and dispense dollar coins by January 2008, and to post signs indicating that they do so.
Production
The composition continued that of the Sacagawea dollar: a cladding of manganese brass over a pure copper core. This composition was chosen because it would give the coin a distinctive golden color, and would also be electromagnetically identical to its predecessor, the cupronickel Susan B. Anthony dollar, for coin acceptors.Minting errors
On March 8, 2007, the United States Mint announced, that on February 15, 2007, an unknown number of George Washington presidential $1 coins were released into circulation without their edge inscriptions. Ron Guth, of the Professional Coin Grading Service, estimated at least 50,000 coins were released without the edge inscriptions. The first such coin discovered was sold on eBay for, while later coins were selling for, as of late March 2007. Because one of the inscriptions missing from the coins is the motto "In God we trust", some articles on the subject have referred to them as "godless dollars". Fake versions have also been produced with the edge lettering filed off.Also, John Adams presidential dollars have been discovered with plain edges. They are fewer in quantity than George Washington plain-edge dollars, making them rarer, thus more expensive. A more frequently encountered edge lettering error for the John Adams dollar is a coin with doubled edge lettering. This error occurs when a coin passes through the edge lettering machine twice. Most examples of the doubled-edge-letter John Adams dollar are from the Philadelphia Mint; Denver Mint issues are comparatively scarce. They are seen in two varieties: 1) with both edge lettering inscriptions reading in the same direction, called "overlapped", and 2) with the two inscriptions running in opposite directions—i.e., inverted or upside-down relative to one another—called "inverted".
In early March 2007, a Colorado couple found a dollar coin which had not been struck with a die pair, but with edge lettering on the otherwise-blank planchet.
Some of the coins have the words on the rim struck upside down. These are not minting errors, but rather a variation created by the minting process. Such upside-down coins have been sold on auction websites like eBay and Amazon for greater than their face value, though they represent roughly 50% of the minted population.
Stockpile and suspension of production
By 2011, 1.4 billion uncirculated $1 coins were stockpiled, which, if laid flat, could reach from Los Angeles to Chicago. By 2016, this number might have reached two billion if the minting had continued unchanged.Rep. Jackie Speier of California circulated a "Dear Colleague" letter recommending that the U.S. not produce any dollar coins. She was planning to introduce legislation calling for the immediate halting of all dollar coin programs.
The United States Government Accountability Office has stated that discontinuing the dollar bill in favor of the dollar coin would save the U.S. government about $5.5 billion over 30 years.
On December 13, 2011, Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced that the minting of presidential $1 coins for circulation would be suspended. Future entries in the program, beginning with those of Chester A. Arthur, would be issued in reduced quantities, only for collectors.
By the end of 2022, the stockpile of $1 coins was reduced to 888 million. The inventory was estimated to last for nearly 16 more years.
The program's end and continuation
The act specifies that for a former president to be honored, they must have been deceased for at least two years before issue. Hence, former presidents George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and then-current president Barack Obama were ineligible to have a dollar coin issued in their honor when the series ended in 2016, after honoring Ronald Reagan, the last president who was eligible.Since the program has terminated, producing coins for those presidents not yet honored would require another Act of Congress. On February 12, 2019, Senator John Cornyn introduced a bill to authorize a presidential dollar honoring George H. W. Bush and an accompanying first spouse gold coin for Barbara Bush, which was signed into law by President Donald Trump on January 28, 2020. On February 19, 2025, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto introduced a bill, following the death of former president Jimmy Carter almost two months earlier, seeking to extend the program to issue the coins of deceased presidents not yet honored.