In proposing the idea of a Presidential dollar coin program, Castle had cited a 2002 study conducted by the General Accounting Office that reports more Americans would use the dollar coin if there were a rotating design similar to that of the 50 State quarters, Deisher noted in her comments. Castle’s goal was to have clean and clutter-free designs by moving the bulk of the text to the edge.Ĭoin World editor Beth Deisher praised the proposal in an Editorial in the March 22, 2004, issue, calling it “an idea whose time has come.” She added, “Defying the conventional wisdom that no dollar coin will successfully circulate as long as the paper equivalent is available, Castle is betting that once most Americans see and use the coins, they will want to continue to use them.” Castle’s bill called for several design innovations - for the presidential portraits and Statue of Liberty to be rendered rim-to-rim, for dropping LIBERTY as one of the inscriptions (the Statue of Liberty design would stand in for the inscription), and for moving certain mottoes, emblems, year date and Mint mark to the edge of each coin. The measure called for temporarily abandoning the portrait of Sacagawea on the obverse of the dollar coin and replacing it with portraits of American presidents, with a Statue of Liberty design on the reverse. On March 9, 2004, Castle introduced the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2004. And it all began with legislation that failed the first time it was placed before Congress. During the program’s run, coins were released into circulation without their edge inscriptions, rumors circulated that the government had voted to remove the motto “In God We Trust” as yet another assault on religion, coins were released with a range of different finishes, and even a few extremely limited-mintage versions sold out. And yet, Castle’s legislation did create a series that some collectors have embraced. When was the last time any of you reading this article received a Presidential dollar back in change from anyone ringing you up at a cash register?įew in the collector community expected the Presidential dollars to circulate any more widely than any other dollar coin for the past hundred years. He predicted that not only would the program be embraced by collectors, it would encourage wider circulation of a dollar coin. president on a circulating dollar coin, struck on the same manganese-brass clad planchets being used for the Sacagawea dollars. However, rather than simply repeating the State quarters series, Castle conceived of depicting every U.S. Michael Castle, R-Del., began looking for a similar coin program - one that would pump multiple new coin designs into circulation every year, and both promote coin collecting and continue a concept that the State quarter dollars represent: coinage as history lessons. So why were Presidential dollars issued in the first place?Ī few years before the end of the State quarter dollars program in 2008, its legislative creator, Rep. Even as far back as the Morgan silver dollar, the public largely preferred the note to the coin. Americans persistently have avoided using bulky dollar coins - even the smaller ones like the Anthony and Sacagawea coins - since they much prefer foldable $1 notes that can be tucked away in wallets and pockets. The Eisenhower dollar, the Anthony dollar, and the Sacagawea dollar - they all failed to replace $1 Federal Reserve notes in circulation. ![]() The first 20 coins were issued for circulation, at least technically if not in actuality, with the remainder of the series produced only for collector sales because the coins of 2007 to 2011 had gone straight to Federal Reserve vaults to sit, unneeded in commerce.įor collectors, this result was no surprise. If success of the 2007 to 2016 Presidential dollar program were to be measured by how well it met the primary goal of the authorizing legislation - to increase the use of dollar coins in circulation - then it can justly be said that the goal was not met.įrom 2007 to 2016, the United States Mint issued 39 different Presidential dollars to celebrate 38 different men.
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