MARCH 16
2016•Richard Nixon Presidential $1
2000•Mint Launches Coin Recirculation Program
The U.S. Mint Celebrates the Richard Nixon Presidential Dollar and Pat Nixon First Spouse Gold Coin
On March 16, 2016, the United States Mint and the Richard Nixon Foundation held a ceremony at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, celebrating two linked coins: the Richard M. Nixon Presidential $1 coin and the Patricia “Pat” Nixon First Spouse $10 gold coin. The event came near the end of two ambitious programs that had spent nearly a decade pairing America's presidents with the spouses who helped shape the social and ceremonial life of the White House.
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Two coins.
Two denominations.
Two very different metals.
One presidency.
And one of the final chapters in a pair of national coin programs launched together in 2007.
March 16, 2016
The U.S. Mint joined the Richard Nixon Foundation at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda to celebrate coins honoring Richard Milhous Nixon and Patricia Ryan Nixon.
The ceremony connected the Presidential $1 Coin Program with its companion First Spouse Gold Coin Program.
The Nixon dollar was the 37th coin in the Presidential $1 Coin Program.
Richard Nixon served as the 37th president of the United States from 1969 until his resignation in 1974.
The coin continued the program's chronological procession through the presidents.
Congress authorized the Presidential $1 Coin Program in 2005.
The first coins appeared in 2007.
Four presidents were generally honored each year in the order they served.
The series began with George Washington in February 2007.
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison followed during the first year.
By 2016, the sequence had advanced through nearly the entire twentieth century.
The obverse features a portrait of Richard Nixon.
The inscriptions identify him by name, presidential number and years of service.
The portrait was designed and sculpted by United States Mint artist Don Everhart.
Presidential dollars share a common reverse featuring the Statue of Liberty.
Don Everhart also created that design.
The denomination appears as $1.
The use of Liberty as the common reverse visually unifies a series whose obverses change with each president.
One of the Presidential dollar program's most distinctive features was its edge lettering.
Depending on year and issue, the edge carried inscriptions including the date, mintmark and E PLURIBUS UNUM.
Early in the program, IN GOD WE TRUST also appeared on the edge.
The “Godless Dollar” Controversy
In 2007, some George Washington dollars escaped the Mint without the intended edge inscriptions.
Because IN GOD WE TRUST was among the missing inscriptions, the error coins received the sensational nickname “Godless Dollars.”
In reality, the entire edge-lettering operation was missing, not merely the religious motto.
Congress subsequently required IN GOD WE TRUST to move from the edge to the obverse.
Beginning in 2009, the motto appeared on the face of Presidential dollars.
The Nixon dollar therefore belongs to the later design format.
By the time the Nixon dollar appeared, Presidential $1 coins were no longer being produced for ordinary circulation.
In late 2011, the Treasury suspended production for circulation because large inventories had accumulated.
The program continued for collectors.
The United States has repeatedly tried to encourage use of dollar coins.
Americans have repeatedly preferred the one-dollar bill.
The Presidential series initially produced hundreds of millions of coins, but public demand did not absorb them as intended.
Federal Reserve inventories grew.
Producing additional circulation dollars while huge stocks already existed made little economic sense.
The government therefore shifted the remaining Presidential issues to collector-oriented production.
An early Washington Presidential dollar could easily turn up in change.
A 2016 Nixon dollar was primarily a numismatic product.
Its smaller production reflected collector demand rather than the needs of national commerce.
Nixon's presidency is among the most consequential and controversial in American history.
His administration pursued major foreign-policy initiatives, created significant domestic institutions and ended in the Watergate scandal and presidential resignation.
A national coin honoring him therefore sits at the intersection of commemoration and complicated historical memory.
Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California, in 1913.
He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
He entered Congress after the war and quickly became nationally prominent.
Nixon served as vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 through 1961.
He traveled extensively and became one of the most visible vice presidents in American history.
He narrowly lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy.
After losing the 1962 California gubernatorial election, Nixon's political career appeared badly damaged.
He returned to national politics and won the presidency in 1968.
He was reelected overwhelmingly in 1972.
China
Nixon's 1972 trip to the People's Republic of China became one of the signature events of his presidency.
The visit helped transform relations between the United States and China.
The phrase “Nixon goes to China” entered political language as shorthand for a leader taking an unexpected policy direction.
Nixon also pursued détente with the Soviet Union.
His administration negotiated major arms-control agreements and sought a less confrontational framework for superpower relations.
Foreign policy remains one of the strongest parts of his presidential legacy.
Nixon inherited the Vietnam War.
His administration gradually withdrew U.S. ground forces while expanding aspects of the conflict into neighboring Cambodia and Laos.
The Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973.
The war's human and political costs remained enormous.
Nixon's administration also oversaw developments sometimes overshadowed by Watergate.
The Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration emerged from legislation signed during his presidency.
His administration also enforced aspects of school desegregation.
On June 17, 1972, burglars connected to Nixon's reelection operation were arrested inside Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex.
The resulting investigation exposed efforts to obstruct justice and conceal connections to the break-in.
Nixon had secretly recorded conversations in the White House.
Those tapes became central evidence.
A legal battle over them reached the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon.
The Court unanimously required the president to comply with a subpoena for recordings.
Facing almost certain impeachment in the House and likely conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation.
He left office on August 9, 1974.
He remains the only U.S. president to resign the office.
President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon in September 1974 for federal crimes he might have committed while president.
The pardon was enormously controversial.
It became part of both men's historical legacies.
The Presidential $1 program did not ask the Mint to rank presidents by moral standing or popularity.
It followed presidential succession.
That meant the series eventually had to confront presidents whose legacies were deeply disputed.
A portrait on a federal coin does not erase Watergate.
Nor should Watergate erase every other event of the administration.
Historical coin writing works best when it resists both hero worship and caricature.
Pat Nixon
The companion gold coin honored Thelma Catherine “Pat” Ryan Nixon.
She served as First Lady from 1969 through 1974.
Her public image emphasized volunteerism, travel and support for charitable causes.
She was born in Nevada in 1912 and grew up in California.
Her father called her “Pat,” associated with her birth near St. Patrick's Day.
The nickname stayed with her throughout her life.
Pat lost her mother while still young and later cared for her father as he became ill.
She worked to support herself and help her family.
Her early life required unusual independence and persistence.
She attended the University of Southern California.
She worked in several jobs, including teaching.
She met Richard Nixon through a community theater production.
They married in 1940.
Richard Nixon's rapid rise meant Pat spent much of her adult life in public political roles.
She campaigned, traveled and represented the United States abroad.
As Second Lady during Eisenhower's presidency, she had already accumulated extensive diplomatic travel experience before entering the White House.
As First Lady, Pat Nixon promoted volunteer service.
She traveled widely, including visits to areas affected by disasters and conflict.
She also worked to expand public access to the White House collection and acquire additional historic objects and artworks.
Pat Nixon became one of the most traveled First Ladies of her era.
She accompanied the president on major international trips and undertook travel independently.
Her public diplomacy became a significant component of her role.
The First Spouse coin carried a face value of $10.
It was struck in one-half troy ounce of .9999 fine gold.
Both proof and uncirculated versions were produced for collectors.
The obverse depicts Pat Nixon.
The inscriptions identify her as First Lady and include the years of her service.
Unlike the Presidential dollar, the First Spouse coin was a high-value precious-metal collector product from the beginning.
The reverse reflects Pat Nixon's emphasis on volunteerism.
The design shows figures representing people helping one another.
The theme connects the coin to one of her signature public causes rather than merely repeating presidential imagery.
The Presidential $1 Coin Act created the First Spouse Gold Coin Program as a companion series.
As each president appeared on a dollar, the president's spouse was generally honored on a corresponding half-ounce gold coin.
Two Programs Moving Through History Together
The concept was unusual.
One series used an inexpensive base-metal dollar.
The other used high-purity gold.
The release schedules were linked by presidential chronology.
Not every president had a spouse while serving.
For those cases, the law provided alternative designs generally featuring an image of Liberty appropriate to the president's era.
The program therefore became partly a survey of historic American Liberty designs.
Jefferson was widowed before becoming president.
His First Spouse companion coin therefore used a Liberty design based on the Draped Bust half cent of his era.
Similar solutions were used for other presidents who served without a spouse.
Grover Cleveland served two nonconsecutive presidential terms and therefore appears twice in the Presidential dollar sequence.
His marital status changed between those terms.
The companion program had to reflect that unusual chronology.
Collectors following the series encounter more than portraits.
They encounter succession, nonconsecutive terms, widowhood, presidential deaths and changes in First Lady roles.
The structure of the series becomes a timeline of the presidency.
Because each contained a half ounce of nearly pure gold, retail prices tracked the precious-metal market and included Mint premiums.
That made the series much more expensive to collect than Presidential dollars.
Collector demand for many First Spouse issues was modest.
Mintages for later coins became quite low by modern U.S. Mint standards.
That has made the series interesting to collectors who study modern low-mintage gold.
This is an important collecting lesson.
A coin can have a tiny mintage because few people wanted it when offered.
Future value depends not only on supply but on continuing demand.
First Spouse coins provide many examples of that relationship.
Early Presidential dollars were made in enormous numbers because the government hoped they would circulate.
Demand in commerce proved weak.
First Spouse gold coins were produced in small numbers because collector demand was limited.
The paired programs therefore illustrate two very different supply problems.
The Nixon release came near the end of the original Presidential $1 sequence.
Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan followed in 2016.
The law originally limited eligibility to deceased presidents who met its timing requirements.
Ronald Reagan Became the Final Coin of the Original Run
When the original program concluded, Ronald Reagan was the last eligible president in sequence.
Jimmy Carter was still living and therefore was not included at that time.
The chronological series effectively jumped from Ford to Reagan under the statutory eligibility rule.
After George H. W. Bush died in 2018, Congress later authorized a Presidential dollar honoring him and a First Spouse gold coin honoring Barbara Bush.
Those coins were issued in 2020.
So 2016 ended the original scheduled run, but not the concept forever.
Location mattered.
The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum stands in Yorba Linda, near Nixon's birthplace.
Holding the ceremony there connected the numismatic objects directly to the institution preserving his presidential history.
A coin can simply appear in a catalog.
A ceremony does something different.
It gathers officials, family members, historians, collectors and the public around the story the coin represents.
The release becomes an event rather than merely a product listing.
Mint launch events have frequently included coin exchanges or opportunities for young attendees to receive examples.
Those activities help connect federal coin programs to communities associated with the honoree.
A mass-produced coin gains a local memory.
The two-program structure encourages a broader view of presidential history.
The president's coin focuses on office and succession.
The spouse's coin can highlight social, cultural or humanitarian work that does not fit comfortably on a presidential portrait.
Pat Nixon's reverse emphasizes volunteerism.
That makes the coin about her public identity rather than simply her marriage.
The strongest First Spouse designs work this way.
Presidential dollars attracted casual collectors, families, school programs and people assembling affordable sets.
Half-ounce gold First Spouse coins required a much larger financial commitment.
Pairing them conceptually did not mean the same people collected both.
The Presidential series revived a feature unfamiliar to many modern Americans: important inscriptions on the coin's edge.
Collectors began examining edges as carefully as obverses and reverses.
That manufacturing choice also created a new family of errors.
By 2016, the Mint had years of experience producing Presidential dollars.
The dramatic early missing-edge-lettering problems were part of the program's history.
The later Nixon issue represents the mature collector phase of the series.
A 2016 coin may still feel recent.
But the Presidential dollar program has already moved from active national initiative to completed historical series.
Collectors now look back at its launch, circulation failure, errors and later low-mintage issues as a defined chapter of U.S. coinage.
Nixon's Coin Raises a Question About Commemoration
Does putting someone on a coin mean the nation endorses everything that person did?
Presidential series make that interpretation difficult.
The coins document officeholders in sequence.
They are simultaneously commemorative objects and chronological records.
Nixon's achievements and failures are both part of American history.
A responsible article about his coin must acknowledge China, détente and domestic policy alongside Vietnam, Watergate and resignation.
The coin offers an entry point, not a verdict.
The companion gold issue shifts attention away from scandal-centered presidential history.
It introduces another person, another set of experiences and another type of public service.
That was one of the most interesting features of the First Spouse concept.
The Presidential $1 and First Spouse programs had been running since 2007.
March 16, 2016 specifically marks the Mint and Nixon Foundation's celebration of the Nixon issues at the presidential library.
The date should not be confused with congressional authorization of either program.
Presidents appear on medals, inaugural pieces, campaign tokens and other exonumia long before or beyond official circulating coin programs.
The 2016 dollar is distinctive because it placed Nixon into the statutory presidential succession series of legal-tender U.S. coinage.
The ceremony brought together two programs approaching their conclusion.
A base-metal dollar recorded the 37th presidency.
A half-ounce gold coin honored the First Lady's volunteerism.
Together they showed how the Mint had spent nearly a decade turning presidential chronology into a paired numismatic history.
Richard Nixon's dollar cannot avoid the enormous weight of his presidency.
Pat Nixon's gold coin tells a quieter story of travel, volunteer service and the evolving role of the First Lady.
The pair demonstrates that national history is rarely contained in one portrait.
On March 16, 2016, the United States Mint and Richard Nixon Foundation celebrated the Richard Nixon Presidential $1 coin and Pat Nixon First Spouse $10 gold coin at the Nixon Presidential Library in California. Near the end of two companion programs that began in 2007, the ceremony paired one of America's most controversial presidencies with a separate tribute to the public work of its First Lady—two numismatic portraits of the same White House years.
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