NOVEMBER 18
2010•Abraham Lincoln Presidential $1
2025•Final Circulating Penny Auction Announced
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential $1 Coin Enters Circulation
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On November 18, 2010, the United States Mint released the Abraham Lincoln Presidential $1 Coin into circulation. It was the 16th coin in the Presidential $1 Coin Program and the fourth presidential dollar issued during 2010, following Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan.
Lincoln was hardly a newcomer to American money. His portrait had appeared on the cent since 1909, making him one of the most familiar faces in U.S. coinage. Yet the 2010 dollar presented him in a completely different numismatic setting: a golden-colored dollar coin with the Statue of Liberty on the reverse and inscriptions placed around the edge.
The November 18 release also came during a remarkable period of Lincoln-themed U.S. coinage. The nation had celebrated the bicentennial of his birth only a year earlier with four different Lincoln cent reverses and a commemorative silver dollar. In 2010, the cent received its new permanent Union Shield reverse, and Lincoln then became the subject of a Presidential dollar.
For collectors, November 18 therefore marks an unusual convergence of presidential history, circulating coinage, and one of the most ambitious rotating-design programs ever attempted by the United States Mint.
The Presidential $1 Coin Program
The Abraham Lincoln dollar belonged to the Presidential $1 Coin Program authorized by the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.
Congress designed the program partly to increase public interest in dollar coins. The Sacagawea dollar, introduced in 2000, had not achieved widespread everyday circulation. Lawmakers looked to the enormous popularity of the 50 State Quarters Program as evidence that regularly changing designs could encourage Americans to seek coins and use them.
The Presidential program therefore placed a different deceased president on the dollar roughly every three months.
The coins were issued in the order in which the presidents served.
George Washington began the series in 2007, followed by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Four presidents generally appeared each year.
Lincoln Becomes Number 16
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865.
Appropriately, he became the 16th president honored in the dollar series.
By 2010, the program had moved through the early republic, the War of 1812 generation, Jacksonian America, and the turbulent decades leading toward the Civil War.
Lincoln represented a historical turning point.
His presidency encompassed secession, the Civil War, emancipation, and the preservation of the Union. Few presidents carried greater historical weight, and few were already as deeply embedded in American numismatic imagery.
United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Don Everhart designed and sculpted the Lincoln obverse.
The portrait shows Lincoln facing slightly to the right, with the inscriptions “ABRAHAM LINCOLN,” “IN GOD WE TRUST,” “16TH PRESIDENT,” and “1861–1865.”
Everhart had a major role in the Presidential dollar series. He also created the common Statue of Liberty reverse used throughout the program’s main run.
His Lincoln is distinct from Victor David Brenner’s profile on the cent. Rather than simply enlarge the familiar penny portrait, the Mint gave the dollar its own interpretation.
That decision helped preserve the identity of the Presidential series while allowing collectors to compare two very different official portraits of Lincoln circulating at the same time.
Every Presidential dollar in the main program used the same reverse design: Don Everhart’s dramatic representation of the Statue of Liberty.
The statue fills much of the coin, with the torch extending prominently upward.
The inscriptions “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and “$1” identify the issuing nation and denomination.
Using a common reverse gave the series visual continuity. The presidents changed every few months, but Liberty remained constant.
It also avoided using a traditional heraldic eagle, giving the Presidential dollars a visual identity unlike most earlier U.S. dollar coins.
One of the most distinctive characteristics of Presidential dollars was the use of edge lettering.
The date, mintmark, “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” and other statutory inscriptions were placed around the edge rather than crowding the obverse and reverse.
This allowed the two main faces to devote more space to portraiture and the Statue of Liberty.
“IN GOD WE TRUST” initially appeared on the edge of early Presidential dollars, but Congress later required the motto to be moved to the obverse or reverse. By the time Lincoln’s coin appeared, the motto was visible on the obverse.
The edge-lettering system also created an entirely new category of modern varieties and errors for collectors.
The “Godless Dollar” Controversy
When the first Washington Presidential dollars appeared in 2007, some coins escaped the Mint without their edge inscriptions.
Because “IN GOD WE TRUST” was then located on the edge, pieces missing the edge lettering quickly became known in popular coverage as “Godless dollars.”
The nickname was sensational, but the underlying numismatic issue was real: the coins had missed a separate edge-lettering operation.
The episode drew enormous public attention to the new series.
Congress subsequently required “IN GOD WE TRUST” to appear on the face of Presidential dollars, while other information continued on the edge.
Lincoln’s 2010 dollar reflects that revised arrangement.
Like the Sacagawea and Native American dollars, Presidential $1 coins have a distinctive golden appearance.
They are not gold coins.
The circulating pieces use a manganese-brass clad composition over a copper core. The alloy gives the surface its characteristic golden color while allowing the coins to be produced for everyday monetary use.
The Lincoln dollar weighs 8.1 grams and measures 26.49 millimeters in diameter.
Those dimensions distinguish it clearly from the larger traditional silver-dollar format used by Morgan and Peace dollars.
The Lincoln dollar was not first struck on November 18.
United States Mint records for the later Lincoln Presidential $1 Coin Cover identify August 2, 2010 as the first day of mintage at Denver and August 3 as the first day at Philadelphia.
That creates three separate dates in the coin’s early history.
August 2–3 mark initial production.
November 18 marks release to the public and entry into circulation.
November 19 marks the ceremonial launch at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.
For this calendar, November 18 is the key event because it is the official circulation release date recorded by the U.S. Mint.
November 18: The Coin Reaches the Public
The Mint announced in advance that Lincoln Presidential dollars would enter circulation on November 18.
That same day, the Mint began selling 25-coin rolls of circulating-quality Lincoln dollars from Philadelphia and Denver.
The rolls were specially wrapped to identify the mint of origin, face value, and United States Mint branding.
Each roll contained $25 in coins and was sold as a numismatic product above face value.
Meanwhile, circulating quantities entered the banking system.
The Mint’s own historical timeline records November 18 as the date the Abraham Lincoln Presidential $1 Coin was released into circulation.
The formal public ceremony came one day later.
On November 19, 2010, Mint Director Ed Moy introduced the coin at President Lincoln’s Cottage on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C.
The timing carried deliberate historical symbolism.
November 19 was the 147th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Children attending the ceremony received a Lincoln Presidential dollar, while adults could exchange currency for rolls of the new coins.
The event connected the modern dollar to both Lincoln’s presidency and one of the most famous speeches in American history.
President Lincoln’s Cottage was far more than a picturesque launch location.
Lincoln used the cottage as a seasonal residence during roughly one quarter of his presidency, escaping the heat and congestion of central Washington while remaining close enough to conduct government business.
He lived there during some of the Civil War’s most consequential periods.
The site is closely associated with his thinking about emancipation and the enormous burdens of wartime leadership.
Holding the coin launch there gave the event historical depth that a generic Mint ceremony could not have provided.
By the time the Presidential dollar appeared, Lincoln had already enjoyed more than a century of numismatic prominence.
The Lincoln cent debuted in 1909 to mark the centennial of his birth.
Victor David Brenner’s portrait made Lincoln the first historical U.S. president to appear on a regular circulating American coin.
The Wheat cent reverse lasted through 1958. Frank Gasparro’s Lincoln Memorial reverse followed in 1959.
In 2009, four temporary reverse designs commemorated stages of Lincoln’s life.
Then, in 2010, the Union Shield became the cent’s permanent reverse.
The 2009 Lincoln Bicentennial
The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 did more than create presidential dollars.
It also included provisions for redesigning the Lincoln cent during 2009, the bicentennial year of Lincoln’s birth.
Four reverses represented his birth and early childhood in Kentucky, formative years in Indiana, professional life in Illinois, and presidency in Washington.
Congress also directed that the cent receive a new permanent reverse after 2009 emblematic of Lincoln’s preservation of the United States as a single, united country.
The result was the Union Shield reverse introduced in 2010.
Thus the law that created Lincoln’s Presidential dollar also helped transform the cent that already bore his image.
Lincoln also appeared on a separate commemorative silver dollar in 2009.
That coin celebrated the bicentennial of his birth and was authorized under different legislation.
Its obverse carried a Lincoln portrait, while the reverse reproduced the final 43 words of the Gettysburg Address.
The 2009 commemorative and 2010 Presidential dollar were therefore very different products.
One was a limited numismatic commemorative struck in silver.
The other belonged to a circulating dollar program and was intended to move through ordinary commerce.
In late 2010, Americans could encounter Lincoln on both the one-cent coin and the dollar coin.
That was an unusual numismatic overlap.
The cent showed Brenner’s century-old profile with the new Union Shield reverse.
The dollar showed Everhart’s portrait paired with the Statue of Liberty.
The two coins differed in size, color, composition, denomination, and artistic style, yet honored the same president simultaneously.
For collectors, it created a particularly rich moment in Lincoln-themed coinage.
The Program’s Circulation Problem
The Presidential dollar program was created partly to encourage Americans to use dollar coins, but rotating presidential portraits did not solve the underlying circulation problem.
Collectors embraced the series more readily than everyday consumers.
Large quantities accumulated in Federal Reserve inventories as demand for circulating dollar coins remained weak.
In December 2011, the Treasury Department announced that production of Presidential dollars for general circulation would be suspended.
The series itself continued, but later issues were produced primarily for collectors rather than released broadly into commerce.
That makes Lincoln’s 2010 dollar part of the earlier circulation phase of the program.
The United States has repeatedly attempted to establish a widely circulating dollar coin.
The Susan B. Anthony dollar debuted in 1979 but never displaced the dollar bill. The Sacagawea dollar arrived in 2000 with a new golden color and distinctive edge, yet also struggled to achieve sustained everyday use.
Presidential dollars added changing designs in hopes of creating public interest similar to the State Quarters phenomenon.
The collecting interest was real.
But collecting a coin and using it routinely are different behaviors.
As long as the one-dollar note remained familiar and readily available, Americans had little incentive to change.
Even if the Presidential dollar did not revolutionize commerce, it succeeded as an educational coin program.
The series placed a chronological parade of presidents into the hands of collectors and the public.
Children could arrange coins in presidential order. Families could discuss administrations, dates, and historical eras while filling folders.
The program echoed one of Congress’s stated observations about the State Quarters: changing circulating designs could turn coins into educational tools.
Lincoln’s dollar was especially effective in that role because his presidency represented one of the central crises in American history.
Collectors can pursue the Lincoln Presidential dollar in several forms.
Circulating-quality pieces were struck at Philadelphia and Denver. Proof versions were produced at San Francisco for collector sets.
Special Mint products included rolls, annual sets, proof sets, uncirculated sets, and the American Presidency $1 Coin Cover.
The coin cover is particularly useful historically because the Mint documented the first mintage dates for the Philadelphia and Denver pieces and postmarked the package November 18, 2010—the public release date.
That creates a compact official record of both production and release milestones.
Edge-Lettering Varieties
Presidential dollars also invite close inspection of their edges.
Because edge lettering was applied as a separate production step, coins can show different orientations depending on how they entered the edge-lettering equipment.
Lettering may appear right-side-up or upside-down when viewed from a particular face. Those orientations are generally normal results of the process rather than errors.
True missing-edge-lettering pieces and other significant edge anomalies are a different matter.
The series taught a generation of collectors to examine the third side of a coin as carefully as the first two.
Few Americans have appeared on such a diverse range of United States numismatic products.
Lincoln has been depicted on cents, commemorative coins, medals, Presidential dollars, and numerous private tokens and exonumia.
His association with money is so strong that “Lincoln” and “penny” became almost inseparable in popular culture.
The 2010 dollar expanded that relationship.
It asked Americans to recognize Lincoln outside the familiar copper-colored cent and within a program devoted to the presidency itself.
November 18, 2010 was the day the Abraham Lincoln Presidential $1 Coin officially entered circulation.
It was the 16th Presidential dollar, honoring the 16th president, and it arrived at the end of a two-year period filled with Lincoln-related coinage.
The coin carried Don Everhart’s portrait of Lincoln on the obverse and his Statue of Liberty design on the reverse. Philadelphia and Denver had begun striking the coins in August, but November 18 was the public release.
The next day, the Mint staged a ceremonial launch at President Lincoln’s Cottage on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.
Those milestones belong together, but they are not the same event.
November 18 marks the moment Lincoln’s new golden-colored dollar moved from the Mint’s production system into the hands of the American public—adding another chapter to the extraordinary numismatic legacy of the president whose face had already occupied the cent for more than a century.
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