The U.S. Mint Releases a Landmark Uncirculated Coin Set

A Familiar Annual Set in an Unusually Historic Year

The United States Mint's annual Uncirculated Coin Set is easy to underestimate.

Unlike a dramatic new commemorative dollar or a precious-metal Proof coin, a Mint Set largely consists of the same denominations Americans recognize from ordinary commerce.

Yet that is exactly what makes annual sets valuable as historical documents.

They preserve the nation's regular coinage for a particular year, organized by mint and packaged specifically for collectors.

The 2022 edition happened to capture an exceptional moment.

America had just begun the American Women Quarters Program, placing five different women on circulating quarter reverses during a single year. The Native American dollar simultaneously honored Ely S. Parker, whose remarkable life connected Seneca leadership, engineering, diplomacy, the Civil War, and the surrender at Appomattox.

July 12 brought all of those designs together in Philadelphia and Denver Uncirculated form.

The date is firmly documented by the United States Mint.

On July 8, 2022, the Mint announced that the 2022 United States Mint Uncirculated Coin Set would become available for purchase on July 12 at noon Eastern Daylight Time.

The Mint also stated that orders placed before the official July 12 on-sale time would not be accepted or honored.

The set carried product code 22RJ and an issue price of $25.25.

Production was limited to 250,000 sets.

The Mint's official 2022 product schedule independently records July 12 as the release date.

Twenty Coins, Two Mints

The set was divided into two cards.

One card contained 10 coins struck at the Philadelphia Mint. The second contained the corresponding 10 coins from Denver.

Each card included five American Women quarters, one Native American dollar, one Kennedy half dollar, one Roosevelt dime, one Jefferson nickel, and one Lincoln cent.

That structure meant collectors received P- and D-mint examples of every denomination represented in the set.

A certificate of authenticity accompanied the product.

For traditional date-and-mint collectors, the format provided a convenient annual package. For historical collectors, however, the five quarters and Parker dollar made the 2022 set something more.

The American Women Quarters Program began in 2022 under the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020.

The four-year program continued through 2025, with five women honored each year.

The Mint described it as the first circulating coin program devoted solely to celebrating American women.

The honorees were chosen to represent groundbreaking contributions across fields including civil rights, suffrage, science, government, humanities, and the arts.

For 2022, the first five were Maya Angelou, Dr. Sally Ride, Wilma Mankiller, Nina Otero-Warren, and Anna May Wong.

All five appeared together in both Philadelphia and Denver versions inside the July 12 Uncirculated Set.

The quarters were significant not only because of their changing reverses.

The obverse also changed.

Instead of the familiar John Flanagan portrait used in various forms since 1932, the American Women quarters adopted a portrait of George Washington created by sculptor Laura Gardin Fraser.

Fraser had prepared the design as part of the original 1931–1932 competition for the Washington quarter.

Her portrait was strongly regarded and recommended during that process, but Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon ultimately chose Flanagan's design.

Nine decades later, Fraser's Washington finally became the circulating quarter obverse.

That made the 2022 quarters simultaneously new and historical: a modern program resurrecting a design rooted in the birth of the Washington quarter series.

Maya Angelou: The Program Begins

Maya Angelou was the first woman honored by the new program and the first Black woman depicted on a United States quarter.

Angelou was a poet, writer, performer, teacher, and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings became one of the defining works of modern American literature.

Her quarter depicts her with arms uplifted. Behind her are a rising sun and a bird in flight, imagery inspired by her writing and symbolic of freedom and the way she lived.

The design was created by Emily Damstra and sculpted by Craig A. Campbell.

The Mint began shipping Maya Angelou quarters to Federal Reserve banks in January 2022, months before the annual set's July release.

That distinction is important: July 12 was the Mint Set release, not the first circulation release of the Angelou quarter.

The second 2022 honoree was physicist and astronaut Dr. Sally Ride.

On June 18, 1983, Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

Her quarter takes an unusually intimate approach.

Rather than showing a shuttle launch or a spacesuited astronaut, the design depicts Ride beside a shuttle window looking toward Earth.

The composition was inspired by her observation that when she was not working in orbit, she was often at a window looking down at Earth.

The words E PLURIBUS UNUM are positioned near the Earth, connecting the national motto with Ride's status as the first American woman to reach space.

Wilma Mankiller was the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Her quarter depicts her facing forward with a resolute expression, a traditional shawl wrapped around her as wind moves behind her.

The seven-pointed star of the Cherokee Nation appears beside her.

Most strikingly, the coin includes the Cherokee Nation's name in the Cherokee syllabary.

The design therefore communicates both Mankiller's individual leadership and the sovereign cultural identity of the nation she led.

Her career included activism for Native American rights and women's rights as well as major work in community development, education, health, and tribal governance.

Nina Otero-Warren: “Votes for Women” in Spanish

Nina Otero-Warren brought another first to circulating American coinage.

A prominent leader in New Mexico's suffrage movement, she insisted that political organizing in the state include its large Spanish-speaking population.

Her quarter depicts Otero-Warren beside yucca flowers, New Mexico's state flower.

The inscription VOTO PARA LA MUJER appears prominently in the design.

The phrase is the Spanish-language counterpart of the suffrage demand “Votes for Women.”

Otero-Warren also became the first woman to serve as superintendent of Santa Fe public schools and was active in education and historic preservation.

Her quarter placed Spanish political language directly onto circulating United States money.

Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American film star to achieve international prominence.

Born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905, she built a career in silent films, sound films, theater, television, and European cinema despite racial discrimination that severely restricted the roles available to Asian American performers.

Her quarter uses a close, stylized portrait framed by bright lines resembling marquee lights.

The composition evokes the glamour and visual language of early Hollywood while focusing attention directly on Wong.

With the coin's release, Wong became the first Asian American featured on U.S. circulating coinage.

The Uncirculated Set doubled the visual story because it included each design from both Philadelphia and Denver.

A collector opening the package encountered ten American Women quarters in total.

The reverses represented literature and civil rights, space exploration, Indigenous government, women's suffrage, and film history.

Few previous annual Mint Sets had contained so many different quarter designs.

The 50 State Quarters and America the Beautiful programs had already accustomed collectors to multiple annual reverses, but the 2022 set began a new thematic era.

The quarters alone would have made the set historically notable.

The 2022 Native American $1 coin added another extraordinary figure.

Ely Samuel Parker was born Ha-sa-no-an-da into a prominent Tonawanda Seneca family in western New York.

As a young man he became fluent in English and served as translator and scribe for Seneca leaders during their efforts to protect tribal lands.

He trained as an engineer and worked on public projects before the Civil War transformed his career.

Grant's Military Secretary

Parker attempted to join the Union war effort but initially encountered barriers because of his Native American identity.

He was eventually commissioned into the Army in 1863.

His abilities brought him onto the staff of Ulysses S. Grant, where he served as military secretary.

Parker was present at Appomattox Court House in April 1865 when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant.

He prepared the formal surrender documents in his own handwriting.

The episode became one of the defining moments of his life.

The Mint's 2022 dollar deliberately focuses on Parker as a communicator and writer rather than presenting a generic military scene.

The reverse, designed by Paul C. Balan and sculpted by Chief Engraver Joseph Menna, depicts Parker in his Army uniform.

A quill pen and book symbolize his skill as a communicator.

The design also incorporates a likeness of Parker's flowing signature.

The inscriptions TONAWANDA SENECA and HA-SA-NO-AN-DA identify both his people and his birth name.

These details make the coin unusually personal.

Rather than reducing Parker to his association with Grant, the design explicitly identifies his Seneca heritage.

Parker's importance extended well beyond Appomattox.

The Haudenosaunee honored him as a Grand Sachem of the Six Nations and gave him the name Donehogawa, commonly translated as Keeper of the Western Door of the Iroquois Longhouse.

After the war, President Grant appointed Parker Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

He became the first Native American to hold that office.

His life therefore crossed worlds that nineteenth-century American society too often treated as separate: tribal diplomacy, federal government, military service, engineering, and national politics.

Like other Native American dollars, the 2022 coin retained Glenna Goodacre's Sacagawea obverse.

Sacagawea appears carrying her infant son, Jean Baptiste.

LIBERTY and IN GOD WE TRUST appear on the obverse, while the date, mintmark, and E PLURIBUS UNUM are incused on the edge.

That format allows the reverse to change annually while preserving the recognizable identity of the Native American dollar series.

Inside the 2022 Uncirculated Set, collectors received both Philadelphia and Denver examples of the Parker reverse.

The word “uncirculated” can be confusing to beginning collectors.

In ordinary numismatic language, any coin that has never entered circulation and shows no wear may be described as uncirculated.

A United States Mint Uncirculated Coin Set, however, is a specific annual collector product.

The coins are produced at the same mints responsible for circulating coinage but are packaged by the Mint rather than released through normal banking channels.

The sets give collectors a convenient way to acquire annual Philadelphia and Denver issues in fresh condition directly from the source.

The Rest of the 2022 Set

The changing-design coins naturally attract most of the attention, but the set also preserved the familiar workhorses of American coinage.

Each mint card included a Lincoln cent, Jefferson nickel, Roosevelt dime, and Kennedy half dollar.

Those designs created a useful contrast.

The set placed long-running twentieth-century portraits beside a brand-new Washington obverse, five new women's reverses, and the annually changing Native American dollar.

It was simultaneously a package of continuity and change.

The Mint limited production to 250,000 units.

That figure should not be confused with the mintages of the individual coin designs in circulation.

Hundreds of millions of 2022 quarters and other denominations were produced for commerce.

The 250,000 figure applied specifically to the packaged 2022 Uncirculated Coin Set.

This distinction matters when collectors evaluate scarcity. A coin can have a massive overall mintage while its appearance in a particular government product is limited to a much smaller quantity.

The original issue price was $25.25.

At face value, the 20 coins totaled considerably less, but Mint Set buyers were not purchasing only spendable currency.

The price covered collector packaging, distribution, program costs, and the convenience of receiving the year's Philadelphia and Denver issues directly from the Mint.

The product was also available through the Mint's enrollment program, allowing recurring collectors to receive annual sets automatically.

Seen from a distance, the July 12 set captures something larger than a product launch.

American circulating coinage had historically portrayed a narrow range of people, especially presidents and allegorical Liberty figures.

By 2022, the Mint was deliberately broadening the historical stories told through everyday money.

The five quarter honorees represented women from different racial, cultural, professional, and geographic backgrounds.

The Native American dollar honored a Seneca leader whose life challenged simplistic narratives of nineteenth-century American history.

Those six changing reverses appeared together in the same annual set.

The First American Women Quarters Were Already Making History

The American Women Quarters had begun entering circulation before July.

Maya Angelou quarters began shipping to Federal Reserve banks in January, followed by later 2022 honorees during the year.

Proof versions also appeared in collector products before the July Uncirculated Set.

That chronology is important because the July 12 milestone should not be overstated.

The date does not mark the first American Women quarter, the first Parker dollar, or the first collector appearance of these designs.

It marks something narrower and precisely documented: the release of the annual Philadelphia-and-Denver Uncirculated Set containing the complete 2022 lineup.

Annual Mint Sets often become more historically interesting as decades pass.

At release, the coins are current. Their portraits, programs, and design changes are part of the present.

Years later, the same package becomes a sealed snapshot of what the Mint considered the nation's regular coinage at a particular moment.

The 2022 set is especially well suited to that role.

A future collector examining it can immediately see the first year of the American Women Quarters, Laura Gardin Fraser's revived Washington portrait, Ely Parker's Native American dollar, and the continuing Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy denominations.

July 12 did not introduce a single revolutionary coin.

Instead, it gathered an unusually important year of American coin design into one official product.

The 2022 Uncirculated Coin Set contained 20 Philadelphia and Denver coins, including all five first-year American Women Quarters and both mint versions of the Ely S. Parker Native American dollar.

The quarters honored Maya Angelou, Sally Ride, Wilma Mankiller, Nina Otero-Warren, and Anna May Wong—five women whose achievements stretched across literature, civil rights, science, tribal leadership, suffrage, education, and film.

The dollar honored a Tonawanda Seneca leader who wrote the Appomattox surrender documents and later became the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

For $25.25, collectors could buy a compact record of that moment directly from the United States Mint.

That is what makes the July 12, 2022 Uncirculated Set more than another annual package. It is a small, official time capsule of a year when the faces and stories on American money were changing dramatically.

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ALSO ON THIS DAY

2000 — Denver Sacagawea Golden Dollars — Denver-minted Sacagawea Golden Dollars became available from the U.S. Mint in bags and rolls.

Related Coin History

• The First American Women Quarters Proof Set Goes on Sale
• The Anna May Wong Quarter Enters Circulation
• Nina Otero-Warren Enters American Coinage
• The U.S. Mint Unveils the 2022 Native American Dollar Honoring Ely S. Parker