NOVEMBER 20
2006•Presidential $1 Coin Designs Unveiled
2013•Native American Code Talkers Congressional Gold Medals
The U.S. Mint Unveils the Presidential $1 Coin Designs
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On November 20, 2006, the United States Mint publicly unveiled the designs for its new Presidential $1 Coin Program at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The event gave Americans their first official look at the circulating dollar series that would begin in 2007 with George Washington and eventually portray every eligible deceased president in the order they served.
The new coins represented one of the most ambitious rotating-design programs in U.S. Mint history. Four presidential portraits would appear each year. A common Statue of Liberty reverse would unite the series. Several inscriptions traditionally placed on the faces of American coins would move to the edge, creating an unusually uncluttered appearance.
The November 20 unveiling was therefore more than a preview of four coins. It introduced a new visual system for the American dollar and launched a numismatic history lesson designed to unfold quarter by quarter, president by president, across many years.
From State Quarters to Presidents
The Presidential dollar concept emerged in the wake of the extraordinary success of the 50 State Quarters Program.
Beginning in 1999, the Mint released five new state-quarter designs each year. Americans who had never considered themselves coin collectors began checking pocket change, filling folders, and waiting for the next state.
The program demonstrated that changing designs could turn ordinary circulating money into an educational and collecting phenomenon.
Congress looked for ways to apply the same principle to the dollar coin.
The result was the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.
President George W. Bush signed the Presidential $1 Coin Act into law on December 22, 2005.
The legislation created a series of dollar coins honoring U.S. presidents in the order in which they served.
Four designs would generally be issued each year, at approximately three-month intervals.
The program could honor only deceased presidents, and a president had to have been dead for at least two years before becoming eligible.
The law also created a companion First Spouse gold coin program and contained provisions affecting the Lincoln cent and other numismatic products.
A Dollar Coin Still Searching for a Public
The United States had been trying for decades to make a small-size dollar coin succeed in everyday commerce.
The Susan B. Anthony dollar debuted in 1979. Its size and color were too similar to the quarter for many users, and public acceptance remained weak.
The Sacagawea dollar arrived in 2000 with a distinctive golden color, smooth edge, and wider border. It solved several identification problems but still failed to displace the dollar bill in normal American transactions.
The Presidential program attempted a different strategy.
Instead of relying on one design, it would give Americans a reason to look for a new dollar four times every year.
The Mint chose the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery for the November 20 unveiling.
The location was ideal.
The new coins were fundamentally a national portrait series. Each obverse would reduce a presidential likeness to the small surface of a circulating dollar.
Displaying the designs inside an institution devoted to portraits connected the coins to a much larger tradition of representing American leaders through painting, sculpture, photography, and other media.
Coins would now become one of the country’s most widely distributed presidential portrait galleries.
The 2007 coins would honor the first four presidents:
George Washington, who served from 1789 to 1797.
John Adams, who served from 1797 to 1801.
Thomas Jefferson, who served from 1801 to 1809.
James Madison, who served from 1809 to 1817.
The sequence established the educational structure of the entire program. A collector following the coins would move through the presidency chronologically.
The first coin portrayed George Washington, the nation’s first president.
Sculptor-Engraver Joseph Menna executed the Washington portrait from a design by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver John Flanagan? No—the Presidential dollar used a distinct modern portrait developed for the series rather than simply reproducing Washington’s familiar quarter image.
The design presented Washington in a formal presidential portrait suitable for the opening coin in the program.
The inscriptions identified his name, presidential number, and years in office.
When released in February 2007, Washington would establish the physical and visual format collectors could expect from the series.
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison
The remaining 2007 designs continued the chronological progression.
John Adams represented the first peaceful transfer of presidential power between elected administrations.
Thomas Jefferson connected the series to the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, and the early development of America’s decimal monetary system.
James Madison represented the Constitution’s intellectual history and the War of 1812 era.
Placed together, the first four coins formed a compact numismatic survey of the early republic.
Rather than create a new reverse for every president, the Mint adopted one common design for the series.
United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Don Everhart created a dramatic image of the Statue of Liberty.
The statue occupies most of the reverse, with the torch extending upward. “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and the denomination “$1” complete the principal inscriptions.
The design avoided a conventional heraldic eagle and gave the series a recognizable identity independent of any individual president.
As the obverse portraits changed, Liberty remained constant.
The Presidential dollars introduced one of the program’s most discussed features: edge inscriptions.
The Mint moved the year, mintmark, “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” and “IN GOD WE TRUST” to the coin’s edge for the initial issues.
The law also required thirteen stars, symbolizing the original states, as part of the edge treatment.
This arrangement freed space on the obverse and reverse and gave the coins a medal-like appearance.
It also made the edge—the often ignored “third side” of a coin—an essential part of the design.
American coins normally carry a substantial number of legally required inscriptions.
A designer must find room for the country name, denomination, date, mintmark, mottos, and principal artwork.
Moving several inscriptions to the edge reduced visual clutter.
The presidential portraits could be larger and more direct. The Statue of Liberty reverse could dominate its field without being surrounded by excessive text.
The aesthetic idea was bold for modern circulating U.S. coinage.
It would also produce an unforeseen controversy only months later.
The Coins Were Golden—but Not Gold
Presidential dollars used the same basic golden-colored manganese-brass clad composition associated with Sacagawea dollars.
They were not made of gold.
The coins weighed 8.1 grams and measured 26.49 millimeters in diameter.
The distinctive color helped separate them visually from quarters, addressing one of the problems that had hurt the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
Their size also made them far smaller than traditional Morgan or Peace silver dollars.
The Mint and Congress intended Presidential dollars to circulate.
This point distinguished the program from commemorative coins sold primarily to collectors.
Banks would receive the coins. Businesses could use them. Consumers could spend them at face value.
At the same time, the rotating designs were explicitly intended to encourage collecting and public education.
The program therefore had two goals that did not always align perfectly: create a successful circulating denomination and create a collectible historical series.
The November 2006 event unveiled designs; it did not release the coins.
The George Washington Presidential dollar entered circulation on February 15, 2007.
That distinction is important.
November 20 marks the public design unveiling and major program-launch milestone.
February 15 marks the first circulating release.
Separating announcement, unveiling, production, and circulation dates prevents one of the most common problems in building a precise coin-history chronology.
Soon after Washington dollars entered circulation, collectors discovered pieces missing their edge lettering.
The coins had passed through the main striking process but missed the separate operation that applied edge inscriptions.
Because “IN GOD WE TRUST” was then on the edge, the error coins quickly acquired the sensational nickname “Godless dollars.”
News coverage turned a Mint production error into a national story.
The episode made millions of Americans examine the edges of their new dollar coins.
The controversy helped produce a design change.
Congress required “IN GOD WE TRUST” to appear on the obverse or reverse of future Presidential dollars rather than the edge.
Beginning with 2009 issues, the motto appeared on the face of the coin.
The date, mintmark, and “E PLURIBUS UNUM” remained on the edge.
Thus the visual format unveiled in November 2006 did not remain completely unchanged throughout the program.
Its first-year experience reshaped it.
The First Spouse Gold Coin Program
The Presidential $1 Coin Act also created a parallel series of half-ounce $10 gold coins honoring presidential spouses.
These First Spouse coins were struck in .9999 fine gold and released in the same general presidential sequence.
Where a president served without a spouse during the presidency, the law provided alternative designs, often featuring an image of Liberty from coinage of that administration.
The companion program gave numismatists a second way to follow the chronology of the presidency.
It also created one of the most unusual modern U.S. gold-coin series.
The chronological structure created special cases.
Grover Cleveland served two nonconsecutive terms and is historically counted as both the 22nd and 24th president.
The Presidential dollar program therefore honored him twice, with separate coins corresponding to those administrations.
More recently, the numbering of the presidency has again been affected by nonconsecutive service, demonstrating that a chronological coin series can intersect with constitutional history in unexpected ways.
The program’s legal eligibility rules, however, remain tied to death and timing requirements.
After the first four presidents, the coins continued through James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and onward.
Each year moved collectors into a new period of national history.
The series eventually reached presidents associated with the Civil War, industrialization, the Progressive Era, two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and the modern presidency.
For young collectors especially, a coin folder could function as a chronological guide to American political history.
One of the most anticipated issues was Abraham Lincoln’s coin, released November 18, 2010.
Lincoln was already one of the most familiar figures on American money because his portrait had appeared on the cent since 1909.
The Presidential dollar gave him a different portrait and denomination while placing him within the chronological presidential sequence.
Its release demonstrated one of the program’s strengths: even presidents already represented elsewhere on U.S. money could be reinterpreted within the unified dollar format.
The Presidential dollars generated collecting interest, but they did not become a major everyday currency.
Americans continued to prefer the one-dollar bill.
As the Mint produced hundreds of millions of dollar coins, Federal Reserve inventories grew.
By 2011, the government held an enormous surplus of unused dollar coins.
The economic logic of continuing mass production for circulation became increasingly difficult to justify.
2011: Production for Circulation Is Suspended
In December 2011, the Treasury Department announced that Presidential dollar production for general circulation would be suspended.
The series did not end.
The Mint continued producing later presidents in quantities sufficient for numismatic demand, selling the coins through collector products.
That transformed the program from a circulation experiment into primarily a collector series.
The change is important when interpreting later issues. A Presidential dollar dated 2014, for example, belongs to the same statutory program but did not have the same broad circulation role envisioned at the 2006 unveiling.
The original run concluded in 2016 with coins honoring Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan.
Jimmy Carter was not eligible at the time because the law required an honored president to have been deceased for at least two years before the relevant issuance window.
The program therefore did not simply include every presidency automatically.
Eligibility depended on statutory rules.
The chronological series that began with Washington ended its original run with Reagan.
Congress later authorized a Presidential dollar for George H. W. Bush after his death.
The coin was issued in 2020, along with a corresponding Barbara Bush First Spouse gold coin.
The extension showed that the concept introduced in 2006 remained flexible enough to accommodate later legislation.
It also reminded collectors that presidential chronology is not frozen when a coin program ends.
The National Portrait Gallery setting on November 20 becomes even more meaningful in hindsight.
The Presidential dollars effectively created a portable portrait gallery in metal.
Millions of portraits could circulate far beyond museums.
A Washington dollar might appear in a cash register in California. A Lincoln dollar might sit in a child’s collection in Illinois. A Theodore Roosevelt dollar might travel in a transit machine or vending system.
Coins made presidential portraiture physically accessible on a scale no museum exhibition could match.
The Educational Value
The program’s educational value extended beyond recognizing faces.
Each coin identified the president’s ordinal number and years in office.
Following the series required learning the sequence of administrations.
Collectors encountered presidents who rarely appear on currency or in popular culture.
Figures such as Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison suddenly had dedicated federal coins.
That alone made the program historically unusual.
The series also changed how many Americans examined coins.
Traditionally, casual collectors focused almost entirely on obverse and reverse.
Presidential dollars forced attention to the edge.
Collectors learned to look for missing lettering, doubled edge inscriptions, orientation differences, and other production characteristics.
Although edge lettering had appeared on earlier U.S. coins, it had not been a normal feature of modern circulating coinage.
The Presidential series reintroduced the edge as an active design surface.
If success is measured by replacing the dollar bill or making dollar coins routine in American commerce, the Presidential program fell short.
If success is measured by generating a large, coherent, educational collecting series, the result looks different.
The program created dozens of presidential portraits, a companion gold series, numerous varieties and errors, Mint products, educational materials, and a chronological framework that remains easy for new collectors to understand.
Its failure as a circulation revolution does not erase its numismatic impact.
November 20, 2006 was the day the United States Mint publicly revealed what its next great circulating coin experiment would look like.
At the National Portrait Gallery, Americans saw the first presidential portraits, Don Everhart’s Statue of Liberty reverse, and the unusual edge-inscription system that would define the new dollars.
The first coin would not enter circulation until February 2007, but the program’s visual identity became public on November 20.
What followed included enormous production, missing-edge-lettering errors, a congressional motto change, a First Spouse gold series, waning circulation demand, and years of collector-only issues.
The Presidential dollars never transformed American cash use the way their sponsors hoped.
But they did transform the dollar coin into a chronological gallery of the presidency—and that gallery was first unveiled to the nation on November 20, 2006.
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