FEBRUARY 15
2007•George Washington Presidential $1 Coin
1991•Mount Rushmore Golden Anniversary Commemoratives
2018•2018 Native American $1 Coin
The George Washington Dollar Launches the Presidential $1 Coin Program
On February 15, 2007, the United States Mint released the George Washington Presidential $1 Coin, launching an ambitious program that would place America's presidents on a rotating series of golden-colored dollar coins. The new dollar introduced an unusual feature to modern U.S. circulation coinage—important inscriptions, including IN GOD WE TRUST and the mintmark, were placed on the edge. Within weeks, missing-edge-lettering errors nicknamed “Godless Dollars” turned the program's first coin into a national collecting sensation.
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George Washington had appeared on American money for generations.
But on February 15, 2007, he appeared in a completely new form.
The United States Mint released the first Presidential $1 Coin, beginning a multi-year series designed to honor the nation's presidents in the order they served.
The coin was golden in color.
Its presidential portrait dominated the obverse.
The Statue of Liberty appeared on the reverse.
And several inscriptions normally found on a coin's faces were moved to its edge.
The program was supposed to encourage Americans to use dollar coins.
Instead, its first great public sensation came from coins on which some of that edge lettering was missing entirely.
A New Attempt to Make the Dollar Coin Work
The United States had struggled for decades to persuade Americans to use dollar coins in everyday commerce.
The large Eisenhower dollar of the 1970s was inconvenient for many people to carry.
The smaller Susan B. Anthony dollar, introduced in 1979, was often confused with the quarter because of its size and color.
In 2000, the golden-colored Sacagawea dollar attempted another fresh start.
It was visually distinctive and popular with collectors, but widespread circulation remained limited.
Congress tried again with a rotating presidential series.
The Presidential $1 Coin Act
President George W. Bush signed the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 into law on December 22, 2005.
The legislation created a program modeled in part on the enormous public interest generated by the 50 State Quarters Program.
Instead of states, the new dollar series would feature presidents.
Four different designs would be released each year.
The presidents would appear in the order of their service.
The program would begin with the first president of the United States.
There was never much suspense about the opening subject.
George Washington served as president from 1789 to 1797.
He therefore led the chronological series.
Washington already had a unique relationship with American coinage.
He had been president when Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1792 and when the first federal Mint was established in Philadelphia.
More than two centuries later, his portrait would launch another federal coinage experiment.
The United States Mint officially released the George Washington Presidential $1 Coin on February 15, 2007.
The Mint marked the occasion with a ceremony at Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
The location was deliberate.
A circulation coin needed to be introduced where people actually moved, bought things and encountered money.
The Mint wanted the new dollars to be spent, not merely saved.
The Washington dollar's obverse features a portrait of George Washington.
The inscriptions are deliberately sparse.
They identify him as:
GEORGE WASHINGTON
1st PRESIDENT
1789–1797
The uncluttered field gave the presidential portrait more visual space than it would have had if all traditional coin inscriptions remained on the face.
The design was sculpted and engraved by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Joseph Menna from a design by Joseph Menna.
Every Presidential dollar in the main series shared a common reverse.
It features the Statue of Liberty.
The denomination appears as $1.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA curves around the design.
The reverse was designed and sculpted by Don Everhart.
Using Liberty as the common reverse linked every president to a single national symbol while allowing the obverse portrait to change every few months.
The Edge Was Part of the Design
The most radical feature was not on either face.
It was on the edge.
The original 2007 Presidential dollars carried several inscriptions there:
2007
E PLURIBUS UNUM
IN GOD WE TRUST
the mintmark
Stars separated portions of the lettering.
Moving these inscriptions off the obverse and reverse created a cleaner, medal-like appearance.
It also introduced an additional manufacturing step.
The edge inscriptions were not part of the obverse or reverse dies.
After the dollars were struck, they passed through separate edge-lettering equipment.
This distinction became extremely important.
A normal coin could receive a perfectly good obverse and reverse strike and still fail to receive its edge inscriptions.
That is exactly what happened to some Washington dollars.
Because edge lettering was applied in a separate operation, its orientation relative to the coin faces could vary.
On some coins, the lettering appears upright when the obverse faces up.
On others, it appears inverted.
Collectors sometimes describe these as Position A and Position B or “heads-up” and “heads-down.”
For ordinary circulation Presidential dollars, both orientations are normal.
The orientation by itself is not an error.
The Presidential dollar used the same basic size and manganese-brass clad composition associated with the Sacagawea dollar.
Its golden color helped distinguish it from the quarter.
The coin contained no gold.
Its appearance came from the outer alloy.
This was an important point because the public sometimes casually called the coins “golden dollars,” leading some people to assume they contained precious metal.
The First Four Presidents of 2007
The program's opening year established the four-coins-per-year rhythm.
After George Washington came:
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
Collectors could follow the presidency chronologically through circulating coins.
The concept combined history education with the hunt for new designs.
The 50 State Quarters Program had brought millions of Americans into casual coin collecting.
Children, families and people who had never visited coin shops searched pocket change for each new state.
The Presidential dollar program attempted to capture some of that energy.
A changing design created a reason to look at money.
A regular release schedule created anticipation.
And the presidential theme was immediately understandable.
But a dollar coin faced a challenge the quarter did not.
Americans were already comfortable using dollar bills.
Previous dollar coins had demonstrated that a well-designed coin does not automatically become popular.
People tend to keep using familiar payment habits.
As long as the one-dollar Federal Reserve note remained readily available, consumers and businesses had little reason to switch.
Many Presidential dollars therefore went directly into collections, jars and bank inventories rather than circulating continuously.
The program created numismatic interest without solving the broader dollar-coin circulation problem.
Within weeks of the Washington dollar's release, collectors made a startling discovery.
Some coins had no edge lettering.
The date was missing.
The mintmark was missing.
E PLURIBUS UNUM was missing.
And most conspicuously:
IN GOD WE TRUST was missing.
The coins had apparently bypassed the edge-lettering operation after being struck.
The press quickly seized on the missing motto.
Headlines called the errors “Godless Dollars.”
The nickname was irresistible.
It also made the story sound more controversial than the manufacturing reality.
The Mint had not intentionally removed IN GOD WE TRUST from the affected coins.
The entire edge inscription was absent because the coins missed a production step.
The error was mechanical, not ideological.
Collectors Started Searching Immediately
The publicity created a modern treasure hunt.
People searched bank rolls and newly released coins looking for blank edges.
News coverage brought the Presidential dollar program attention that ordinary advertising could never have purchased.
For a brief period, a brand-new circulating dollar became one of the most talked-about coins in America.
Some early sellers asked enormous prices.
As more examples were discovered, the market adjusted.
The separate edge-lettering process created other possibilities.
Some coins received doubled edge inscriptions.
Some had partial or weak lettering.
Others showed unusual overlaps or spacing.
Because the edge was now a third design surface, collectors had an entirely new area to inspect.
The Presidential dollars effectively expanded error collecting from two faces to three.
The controversy surrounding IN GOD WE TRUST did not end with the error coins.
Congress later required the motto to be moved from the edge to the obverse.
Beginning in 2009, Presidential dollars displayed IN GOD WE TRUST prominently on the coin's face.
The date, mintmark and E PLURIBUS UNUM remained on the edge.
That means the series itself preserves a visible design change caused partly by the unusual edge-lettering concept introduced in 2007.
The Mint produced the first Presidential dollar in enormous quantities.
Philadelphia and Denver together struck hundreds of millions of George Washington dollars.
The scale reflected optimism that the coins would circulate widely.
Collectors saved vast numbers in uncirculated condition.
As a result, ordinary Washington dollars remain readily available.
The unusual errors and high-grade pieces are where much of the specialist interest lies.
The broader program eventually encountered a practical problem.
Demand for circulating dollar coins was far lower than production.
Federal Reserve inventories accumulated large quantities.
By 2011, the government held more than a billion dollar coins in storage.
Continuing to strike huge quantities for circulation made little economic sense.
Circulation Production Ends
In December 2011, the Treasury Department announced that Presidential dollar production for general circulation would be suspended.
The program itself did not end.
The Mint continued producing the required presidential designs in smaller quantities for collectors.
That distinction is important.
The Presidential $1 Coin Program continued, but after the early years, most new issues were no longer intended to flow through everyday commerce.
The law included an unusual eligibility rule.
A president had to be deceased for at least two years before a coin could be issued in his honor.
Living former presidents were excluded.
This meant the chronological program could eventually pause if it reached a president who did not meet the requirement.
The rule also preserved the traditional American reluctance to place living presidents on circulating coins.
The original sequence concluded in 2016 with Ronald Reagan.
At that point, later presidents did not yet satisfy the statutory requirements.
The program appeared complete.
Then another president became eligible.
Congress passed legislation authorizing a Presidential dollar for George H. W. Bush after his death.
The coin was issued in 2020.
That made Bush an additional entry after what had seemed to be the program's conclusion.
The episode demonstrated that the presidential series was tied not simply to a fixed checklist but to statutory eligibility.
For collectors, the 2007 Washington dollar has several reasons to matter.
It is the first Presidential dollar.
It introduced the original edge-inscription format.
It generated famous missing-edge-lettering errors.
It exists from both Philadelphia and Denver for circulation, along with San Francisco proofs.
And it captures the optimism of a federal program that initially expected dollar coins to become much more common in American commerce.
How to Examine a 2007 Washington Dollar
Anyone checking one should examine all three surfaces.
First inspect Washington's portrait and the Statue of Liberty reverse.
Then turn the coin on its edge.
A normal 2007 circulation piece should show the date, mintmark, E PLURIBUS UNUM and IN GOD WE TRUST.
If the edge is completely blank, the coin may be a missing-edge-lettering error and deserves closer examination.
Because altered and damaged coins exist, valuable examples should be authenticated by a reputable numismatic service.
The “Godless Dollar” phenomenon felt surprisingly traditional.
For generations, collectors had searched circulation for doubled dies, repunched mintmarks and other mistakes.
In 2007, Americans could once again obtain a roll of brand-new coins from a bank and search for a visually obvious error.
The technology was modern.
The excitement was classic coin collecting.
The release of the George Washington dollar launched far more than a single coin.
It began a presidential chronology that would continue for years.
It introduced edge lettering to modern circulating U.S. coinage on an unprecedented scale.
It produced one of the most famous twenty-first-century Mint errors.
And it became another chapter in America's long attempt to persuade the public to embrace a dollar coin.
The Presidential dollar never displaced the dollar bill.
But as a collecting program, it created a large and accessible series tied directly to American history.
Washington was the logical beginning.
His 2007 dollar established the portrait format, the Statue of Liberty reverse and the experimental edge lettering that would define the program's early years.
Then a manufacturing mistake made the first issue unforgettable.
On February 15, 2007, the George Washington Presidential $1 Coin entered circulation and launched a new American coin series—one whose innovative edge lettering would almost immediately produce the famous missing-lettering “Godless Dollar” errors.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1991 — Mount Rushmore Golden Anniversary Commemoratives — Mount Rushmore 50th Anniversary commemorative half dollar, silver dollar and $5 gold coin released.
2018 — 2018 Native American $1 Coin — 2018 Native American dollar products were released for collectors.