JULY 1
2016•Reagan Presidential Dollar Closes an Era
1851•George N. Eckfeldt Appointed Mint Director
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Dollar Closes an Era of U.S. Coinage
On July 1, 2016, the United States Mint opened sales of circulating-quality Ronald Reagan Presidential $1 Coins in rolls, bags, and boxes from the Philadelphia and Denver Mints. The release marked the final president in the original Presidential $1 Coin Program, bringing to a close a nearly decade-long series that had begun with George Washington in 2007. Yet the Reagan dollar also tells a more complicated story: by the time it arrived, Presidential dollars were no longer being produced for everyday circulation, and the ambitious experiment to put America’s presidents into Americans’ pockets had become primarily a collector program.
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The Last President in the Original Presidential Dollar Sequence
When the United States Mint opened sales of Ronald Reagan Presidential $1 Coin rolls, bags, and boxes at noon Eastern Time on July 1, 2016, it reached the end of a sequence that had begun almost a decade earlier.
The Presidential $1 Coin Program was created under Public Law 109-145, the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005. Beginning in 2007, the program placed portraits of presidents on dollar coins in the order in which they served. George Washington came first, followed by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison during the inaugural year.
For most of the program, four presidents were honored annually. By 2016 the sequence had reached Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was the 40th president of the United States, serving from 1981 through 1989. His dollar became the final coin of the original 2007–2016 Presidential $1 sequence.
What Happened on July 1, 2016?
The exact event matters.
July 1 was the date on which the United States Mint opened sales of collectible rolls, bags, and boxes containing circulating-quality Ronald Reagan Presidential $1 Coins from its Philadelphia and Denver facilities.
The Mint offered six options:
- 25-coin Philadelphia roll — $32.95
- 25-coin Denver roll — $32.95
- 250-coin Philadelphia box — $275.95
- 250-coin Denver box — $275.95
- 100-coin Philadelphia bag — $111.95
- 100-coin Denver bag — $111.95
The coins inside had never been placed into circulation. The packaging identified Ronald Reagan, the mint of origin—P or D—and the face value of the contents.
This makes July 1 a product-release date rather than a claim that the first Reagan dollar of any kind was struck or first became available that day.
The Reagan dollar had already appeared in other United States Mint products before July 1.
The 2016 Presidential $1 Coin Proof Set, containing Proof coins for Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan struck at San Francisco, went on sale in February. The 2016 Presidential $1 Coin Uncirculated Set, containing Philadelphia and Denver examples of all three presidents, followed in March.
July 1 therefore should not be described as the first appearance of a Ronald Reagan Presidential dollar in any Mint product.
Its significance is more precise: on July 1 the Mint opened sales of the circulating-quality Reagan dollars packaged in the familiar rolls, bags, and boxes offered to collectors. In doing so, it reached the last presidential subject of the original Presidential $1 Coin Program.
A Dollar Made for Circulation That Wasn't Circulating
There is an irony at the heart of the Reagan dollar.
The coins sold on July 1 were described by the Mint as circulating quality. But that did not mean they were being released into ordinary commerce.
By then, the government had stopped producing Presidential dollars for general circulation.
When the program began in 2007, Presidential $1 Coins were intended as circulating money. Millions were struck, and the program was designed in part to encourage Americans to use dollar coins more frequently.
That goal did not work as hoped.
The United States had tried repeatedly to persuade Americans to embrace a small-size dollar coin.
The Susan B. Anthony dollar debuted in 1979 but suffered from public confusion with the quarter and never displaced the dollar bill. The Sacagawea dollar arrived in 2000 with a golden color and distinctive design, but it likewise failed to become the dominant form of the one-dollar denomination.
The Presidential $1 Coin Program represented another attempt.
The concept was powerful from a collecting standpoint. A changing series of presidents could encourage people to search for new designs, just as the 50 State Quarters Program had transformed public interest in quarters.
But collecting coins and spending them are different behaviors.
Americans continued to prefer the one-dollar Federal Reserve note, while Presidential dollar coins accumulated in government inventories.
Circulating Production Ends in 2011
In December 2011, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner directed the United States Mint to suspend production of new Presidential $1 Coins for general circulation.
The Federal Reserve already held a substantial inventory of dollar coins, enough to satisfy normal transactional demand without continuing to manufacture large quantities of new Presidential dollars.
The program itself did not end.
The Mint continued producing Presidential dollars in quantities intended to meet collector demand. That is why presidents from Chester A. Arthur onward could still receive coins even though those later issues generally did not enter everyday circulation through the Federal Reserve in the manner of the earlier releases.
By the time Ronald Reagan's dollar arrived in 2016, the series had effectively changed character. What began as a circulating coin initiative had become predominantly a numismatic program.
The sequence created an unusual situation in 2016.
Gerald Ford had served as the 38th president. Jimmy Carter was the 39th. Ronald Reagan was the 40th.
Yet the 2016 coins moved from Ford directly to Reagan.
The reason was written into the law.
The Presidential $1 Coin Act prohibited the appearance of a living former or current president and also required a period after a president's death before that individual could be honored under the program.
Jimmy Carter was living when the original sequence reached his place in 2016, so he was ineligible for a coin at that time. Reagan, who had died in 2004, satisfied the law's eligibility requirements.
The Mint therefore issued Nixon, Ford, and Reagan as the three Presidential dollars of 2016, and Reagan became the endpoint of the original program.
The Reagan Dollar Design
The Reagan dollar's obverse features a forward-facing portrait of Ronald Reagan.
Surrounding it are the inscriptions:
- RONALD REAGAN
- IN GOD WE TRUST
- 40th PRESIDENT
- 1981–1989
The portrait was designed by United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program artist Richard Masters and sculpted by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Joseph Menna.
The reverse carries the Statue of Liberty design used throughout the Presidential $1 Coin Program. It was designed and sculpted by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Don Everhart and bears the inscriptions $1 and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Additional information appears on the edge. The year, mint mark, and E PLURIBUS UNUM are incused there, continuing one of the most visually distinctive features of the Presidential dollar series.
The legislation behind the Presidential $1 Coin Program was about more than changing the face on a dollar.
Congress explicitly sought to revitalize American coin design and restore circulating coinage as an object of aesthetic interest. The program used large presidential portraits, a common Statue of Liberty reverse, and edge inscriptions that freed additional space on the principal faces of the coin.
The result was effectively a chronological gallery of American presidents in metal.
Collectors could follow the presidency from Washington through the nineteenth century, the Civil War, industrialization, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and eventually Reagan's presidency in the 1980s.
In that respect, the series succeeded in a way that cannot be measured simply by how often the coins appeared in cash registers. It created a substantial modern collecting series and placed American political history onto dozens of different dollar-coin designs.
From George Washington to Ronald Reagan
The scale of the original series was considerable.
The first year, 2007, honored George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
The program then proceeded chronologically through presidents including Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
By 2016, only three eligible presidents remained in the original sequence: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan.
The Reagan issue therefore carried a significance that an ordinary annual coin release did not. It represented the last stop in a numismatic journey that had begun with the first president nine years earlier.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois.
Before reaching the White House, his career took him through radio broadcasting, Hollywood, military service, organized labor, corporate speaking, and politics. He served two terms as governor of California and later won the presidency in the 1980 election.
He took office on January 20, 1981, as the nation's 40th president and served two terms through January 1989.
The path from a small Illinois town to the presidency gave the Reagan dollar a particularly American biographical arc: a president born far from Washington ultimately became the final subject in a coin series built to tell the history of the presidency itself.
The Mint publicly unveiled the Ronald Reagan Presidential $1 Coin design on February 6, 2016—the 105th anniversary of Reagan's birth—at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library in California.
The event also unveiled the design for the Nancy Reagan First Spouse Gold Coin.
The two programs had been linked from their beginning. Alongside the Presidential dollars, the Mint issued First Spouse coins honoring the spouses associated with each presidency, generally following the same chronological sequence.
The Reagan and Nancy Reagan issues therefore represented endings on two parallel numismatic timelines.
Not the End of Presidential Dollars Forever
Calling Reagan the last Presidential dollar requires one important qualification.
He was the final president honored in the original 2007–2016 sequence. That did not make it legally or historically impossible for Congress to authorize another presidential dollar later.
And that eventually happened.
After the death of George H. W. Bush in 2018, Congress authorized a Presidential $1 Coin honoring him. The Mint issued the George H. W. Bush Presidential $1 Coin in 2020.
So the Reagan dollar is best understood not as the last Presidential dollar that could ever exist, but as the coin that closed the original program's chronological run.
July 1, 2016, was not a dramatic first strike on a nineteenth-century steam press. It was not the discovery of a great rarity or the passage of a landmark coinage law.
Its importance comes from closure.
Collectors ordering a Philadelphia or Denver roll, bag, or box that day were buying the final presidential subject in a sequence that had occupied the United States Mint's calendar since 2007.
The series had begun with hopes that changing presidential portraits might help Americans embrace the dollar coin. By its end, the government was no longer making those dollars for general circulation.
That contrast makes the Reagan dollar a fitting artifact of modern American coinage.
It was simultaneously the completion of an ambitious national series and evidence of the limitation that had shadowed modern dollar coins for decades: Americans might collect them enthusiastically without ever choosing to use them as their everyday dollar.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1851 — George N. Eckfeldt Appointed Mint Director — George N. Eckfeldt Appointed Mint Director