MARCH 7
2007•Mint Confirms Washington Dollars Missing Edge Lettering
1928•Hawaiian Sesquicentennial Half Dollar
The U.S. Mint Acknowledges Washington Dollars Missing Their Edge Lettering
On March 7, 2007, the United States Mint publicly acknowledged that an unspecified number of the new George Washington Presidential $1 coins had entered circulation without their edge inscriptions. The missing lettering included the date, mintmark, E PLURIBUS UNUM and IN GOD WE TRUST—features applied in a separate step after the coins were struck. The error instantly became one of the most famous modern U.S. Mint mistakes, sending Americans searching through rolls of brand-new dollars for what collectors quickly nicknamed the “Godless Dollar.”
◆
The Presidential $1 Coin Program was only weeks old.
The first coin honored George Washington.
The Mint expected the new golden-colored dollars to attract public interest.
They did.
But not entirely for the reason intended.
A New Presidential Dollar Program
Congress authorized the Presidential $1 Coin Program in 2005.
The concept was familiar: use changing coin designs to encourage collecting and public interest in American history.
Beginning in 2007, deceased U.S. presidents would appear on dollar coins in the order they served.
Four presidential designs were scheduled each year.
The first Presidential $1 coin honored George Washington.
It entered circulation on February 15, 2007.
Joseph Menna sculpted the obverse portrait from a design by Joel Iskowitz.
The reverse, designed and sculpted by Don Everhart, showed the Statue of Liberty.
The Presidential dollars shared the golden color and basic dimensions of the Sacagawea dollar.
But one feature immediately distinguished the new series.
Several inscriptions normally found on a coin's obverse or reverse had been moved to the edge.
The 2007 Washington dollar's edge carried:
- the year 2007
- the mintmark
- E PLURIBUS UNUM
- IN GOD WE TRUST
Decorative stars separated the inscriptions.
Congress intended the edge treatment to create more room for the presidential portrait and Statue of Liberty design.
Edge lettering also recalled older coinage traditions.
Many historic coins had used lettered or ornamented edges for security, denomination or decorative purposes.
On the Presidential dollar, however, the process introduced a new production vulnerability.
The Lettering Was Applied Separately
The Washington dollars did not receive all of their inscriptions during the main striking operation.
First, blank planchets were struck between the obverse and reverse dies.
Afterward, the coins passed through separate edge-incusing equipment.
That machine applied the date, mintmark, mottoes and stars.
If a struck coin failed to pass properly through the edge-lettering process, the obverse and reverse could look normal while the edge remained blank.
That is essentially what happened.
Fully struck Washington dollars entered circulation with none of the intended edge inscriptions.
The new dollars had barely entered circulation before people began reporting pieces with plain edges.
The discovery was unusually easy for the public to understand.
No microscope was required.
No specialist knowledge of die markers was necessary.
Turn the coin sideways.
If the lettering was absent, something was clearly wrong.
On March 7, 2007, the United States Mint issued a public statement acknowledging the problem.
The agency said it had learned that an unspecified number of George Washington Presidential $1 coins had entered circulation without their edge lettering.
The Mint identified the missing elements as the date, mintmark, E PLURIBUS UNUM and IN GOD WE TRUST.
At the time of the statement, officials did not provide a precise number of affected coins.
That uncertainty helped fuel public excitement.
Were there hundreds?
Thousands?
Tens of thousands?
Collectors began searching immediately.
News coverage focused heavily on the absence of IN GOD WE TRUST.
The coins were quickly nicknamed “Godless Dollars.”
The phrase was catchy but incomplete.
The error did not selectively remove the religious motto.
It removed the entire edge-lettering operation.
A genuine missing-edge-lettering Washington dollar lacks all of the incused edge inscriptions that should have been applied in that production step.
That includes the date and mintmark as well as both mottoes.
Describing the error only as “missing IN GOD WE TRUST” obscures the actual manufacturing failure.
The Motto Had Not Been Deliberately Removed
The error also generated political controversy because some people assumed the Mint had intentionally omitted IN GOD WE TRUST.
It had not.
The motto was legally required and was intended to appear on the edge.
The blank-edge pieces were manufacturing errors, not a policy decision.
The Washington dollar error had everything needed to become national news.
The coin was brand new.
It honored the first president.
The error was visually obvious.
The religious motto was involved.
And anyone with access to a roll of dollars could potentially find one.
Banks and Federal Reserve distribution channels had large quantities of new Washington dollars.
Collectors bought or requested rolls and examined the edges.
For a brief period, ordinary Americans who had never studied mint errors were hunting them.
The episode demonstrated how quickly a modern coin variety could become a mass-market phenomenon.
Large concentrations of missing-edge-lettering Washington dollars were reported in Florida.
Other examples appeared elsewhere.
The geographic clustering helped researchers understand how affected batches moved through the distribution system.
Modern errors can sometimes be traced not only through dies but through packaging and shipment patterns.
The best-known missing-edge Washington dollars are Philadelphia Mint pieces.
Because the mintmark itself was supposed to be on the edge, a blank-edge coin does not announce its mint of origin in the normal way.
Specialists and grading services rely on established diagnostics and production evidence when attributing examples.
On correctly produced 2007 Presidential dollars, the edge inscriptions can appear in different orientations relative to the obverse.
Some read normally when the obverse faces up.
Others appear inverted.
This is not an error.
Collectors often describe the two orientations as Position A and Position B.
The difference resulted from the way coins entered the edge-lettering equipment.
Because orientation was not controlled to make every coin identical, both directions are normal.
A coin with upside-down edge lettering is not equivalent to a blank-edge error.
The true missing-edge variety has no intended incuse edge inscription at all.
This distinction became important as public attention brought many ordinary coins to dealers and grading services.
Weak Edge Lettering Is Another Category
Some Presidential dollars show weak, partial or otherwise unusual edge inscriptions.
Those can result from problems during the edge-incusing process.
They are different from coins that completely missed the lettering operation.
Serious error attribution depends on understanding the manufacturing sequence.
The separate edge process also created other possibilities.
A coin could pass through edge-incusing equipment more than once, producing doubled lettering.
Presidential dollars therefore became an unusually rich series for edge-related errors and varieties.
The innovative feature that gave the series its distinctive appearance also created its most famous problems.
Traditional coin inscriptions are normally part of the dies.
If LIBERTY is engraved into the obverse die, every normal strike receives it automatically.
But when important inscriptions are moved to a later production stage, quality control must ensure every coin completes that additional operation.
The Washington error exposed the weakness of separating the processes.
The missing lettering did not make the coins counterfeit.
They were genuine U.S. Mint products struck on proper planchets with official dies.
They were also legal tender at their face value.
The numismatic premium came from the production error, not from any change in monetary status.
The reverse inscription $1 remained on the coin.
So even without the date and mintmark, the denomination was obvious.
The error removed identifying and motto inscriptions but did not erase the coin's value.
The United States had struggled for decades to persuade Americans to use dollar coins.
The Susan B. Anthony dollar had failed to gain broad acceptance.
The Sacagawea dollar saw limited circulation after its initial promotion.
The Presidential series was another attempt to make the denomination interesting enough to use and collect.
The success of the 50 State Quarters Program showed that rotating designs could generate enormous public attention.
Congress hoped presidents might do something similar for the dollar.
Four new designs per year created a built-in reason to keep watching for the next coin.
The missing-edge error generated even more attention than planned.
Washington Was an Appropriate First President
The program began with the nation's first president and then followed presidential order.
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison completed the 2007 lineup.
That structure turned the dollar series into a chronological procession through presidential history.
The public reaction to placing IN GOD WE TRUST on the edge did not end with the error.
Critics argued that the motto was less visible there and too easily mistaken as absent.
Congress responded.
Legislation enacted in late 2007 required IN GOD WE TRUST to move from the edge to the obverse of Presidential $1 coins.
Beginning in 2009, the motto appeared on the face of the coin.
The date, mintmark and E PLURIBUS UNUM remained on the edge.
That makes the 2007 missing-edge episode more than an amusing mistake.
The controversy surrounding the edge motto contributed to a permanent design change in the Presidential dollar program.
The series itself became evidence of how public reaction can influence coin legislation.
Washington was not the only president whose dollars produced edge-related mistakes.
Other issues are known with missing, weak or doubled edge lettering.
But the Washington error remains the iconic example because it appeared at the program's launch and captured national attention.
The John Adams dollar became especially known for doubled edge lettering.
Some pieces passed through the edge-lettering operation twice.
Collectors learned that the new series offered an entire category of errors that scarcely existed on conventional modern coins.
The Mint responded to the Washington problem by strengthening procedures intended to prevent struck coins from bypassing the edge-lettering operation.
Modern mass production always involves some possibility of error.
The challenge is detecting failures before coins leave the facility.
A normal coin can hide how it was made.
An error often reveals the sequence.
The blank-edge Washington dollar proves that the obverse and reverse were struck before the edge inscriptions were applied.
If all three operations happened simultaneously, this exact error could not exist.
The Edge Becomes a Third Design Surface
Collectors traditionally focus on obverse and reverse.
Presidential dollars forced them to inspect a third surface.
The edge could reveal orientation, missing inscriptions, doubled lettering or other anomalies.
That changed the physical act of examining a modern dollar coin.
A valuable error invites alteration and imitation.
Someone can grind, file or otherwise tamper with a normal coin's edge.
That does not create a genuine Mint error.
Authentic missing-edge pieces should show characteristics consistent with having skipped the incusing process rather than evidence of post-Mint removal.
Major grading services authenticated and encapsulated missing-edge Washington dollars.
Certification helped buyers distinguish genuine Mint errors from altered pieces.
It also created a standardized marketplace for an error that had suddenly become nationally famous.
When a new error first appears, scarcity is uncertain.
Initial examples can command high asking prices because no one yet knows how many exist.
As more Washington missing-edge dollars were discovered, the market gained a better understanding of availability.
This is common with modern errors.
The Washington missing-edge dollar is famous.
That does not necessarily make every example extremely rare.
Numismatic importance can come from historical timing, public recognition and the clarity of an error as much as absolute population.
This coin became a cultural event.
Many classic errors are discovered years or decades after production.
The Washington dollar episode unfolded almost in real time.
The coin entered circulation in February.
Collectors found the problem.
The Mint issued a formal statement on March 7.
National news followed immediately.
By 2007, collectors could share discoveries online within hours.
Digital photographs, message boards and news sites accelerated information that once might have traveled through monthly hobby publications.
The Washington error was therefore also an early example of how quickly modern numismatic discoveries could spread in the internet age.
Anyone Could Participate
The most compelling aspect of the story was accessibility.
You did not need to bid at a major auction.
You did not need access to an old collection.
You could go to a bank, obtain new dollar coins and look at the edges.
That possibility brought treasure hunting into everyday commerce.
“Godless Dollar” remains the phrase many people remember.
For historical accuracy, however, missing-edge-lettering Washington dollar is better.
It identifies the actual Mint error without implying that the religious motto alone was intentionally omitted.
The U.S. Mint manufactures coins on an industrial scale.
Most pieces emerge exactly as intended.
That is what makes errors fascinating.
A small break in a tightly controlled process can create an object that collectors study for generations.
Ask collectors what they remember about the launch of Presidential dollars and the missing-edge Washington pieces are likely to come up immediately.
The error became inseparable from the first year.
In an ironic way, the manufacturing failure gave the new dollar series enormous publicity.
March 7 was not the day the first error was struck or necessarily the day the first collector found one.
It was the day the United States Mint publicly acknowledged the problem in an official statement.
That gives the episode a firm documentary anchor.
The Mint itself confirmed that genuine Washington dollars without edge inscriptions had escaped into circulation.
The Presidential dollar program tried something visually distinctive.
Moving critical inscriptions to the edge opened space on the faces of the coin.
It also introduced a separate manufacturing step.
When some coins skipped that step, the result became one of the defining modern U.S. Mint errors.
On March 7, 2007, the United States Mint publicly acknowledged that an unspecified number of George Washington Presidential $1 coins had entered circulation without their edge lettering. The missing date, mintmark and mottoes turned a routine production failure into the famous “Godless Dollar” story—and made millions of Americans look at the edge of a coin in an entirely new way.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1928 — Hawaiian Sesquicentennial Half Dollar — Congress authorized 10,000 Hawaiian Sesquicentennial half dollars