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OCTOBER 11

2019•First Four-Coin Innovation $1 Proof Set Released

2016•Ronald Reagan Coin and Chronicles Set

NEXT DAYOCTOBER 12North Carolina Innovation Dollar Honors First Public University

The First Four-Coin American Innovation $1 Proof Set Goes on Sale

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At noon Eastern Time on October 11, 2019, the United States Mint opened sales of the first four-coin American Innovation $1 Proof Set, bringing together proof versions of the Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Georgia dollars from the first full year of the American Innovation program.

The set was an important milestone for a series designed to tell a very different kind of American story. Rather than presidents, national parks, or famous military events, the American Innovation dollars celebrate inventions, discoveries, innovators, and ideas associated with each state, the District of Columbia, and the five U.S. territories.

The four 2019 coins ranged from astronomy and medicine to technology and agriculture: Annie Jump Cannon’s stellar classification system, the polio vaccine, the light bulb, and the Trustees’ Garden.

October 11, 2019

The Mint’s product-specific announcement established the release precisely.

Sales began October 11 at noon ET.

The four-coin proof set was priced at $20.95.

The Mint imposed no mintage limit, no product limit, and no household order limit.

The coins were struck at the San Francisco Mint and carried the S mint mark.

The American Innovation $1 Coin Program had technically begun in 2018 with a special introductory coin.

That first issue honored the signing of the first U.S. patent by President George Washington in 1790.

But 2019 was the first year in which the program followed its intended four-design annual format.

The October proof set therefore became the first set to present an entire year’s state Innovation dollars together.

A 56-Coin National Series

The American Innovation $1 Coin Act authorized a long-running sequence honoring innovation throughout the United States.

One introductory coin appeared in 2018.

Beginning in 2019, four new reverse designs were scheduled each year, representing the states, District of Columbia, and U.S. territories in the order they entered the Union or ratified the Constitution, followed by the remaining jurisdictions.

The full program was designed to continue through 2032.

All four 2019 proof dollars shared the program’s common obverse.

The inscriptions IN GOD WE TRUST and $1 accompany the design.

A small privy mark resembling a stylized gear appears on the obverse, symbolizing industry and innovation.

The common Liberty portrait unifies a series whose reverse subjects can differ enormously.

Like several modern U.S. dollar programs, the Innovation dollar moves some inscriptions to the edge.

The edge carries the year, mint mark, and E PLURIBUS UNUM.

This keeps the obverse and reverse comparatively open for large central designs.

For the proof coins in the October 11 set, the edge included the 2019 date and S mint mark identifying San Francisco.

The coins in this set were not ordinary uncirculated dollars placed in special packaging.

They were manufactured as proofs.

The Mint uses specially prepared dies and planchets and carefully controlled striking processes to produce sharp details and contrasting surfaces.

The 2019 Innovation proofs display the polished, mirrorlike fields and frosted devices collectors expect from modern U.S. proof coinage.

San Francisco has long been the principal production site for modern proof sets.

Delaware: Annie Jump Cannon

The first coin in the set honored Delaware and astronomer Annie Jump Cannon.

Cannon was born in Dover, Delaware, in 1863 and became one of the most important stellar classifiers in the history of astronomy.

Working at the Harvard College Observatory, she classified hundreds of thousands of stars by their spectra.

Her work helped establish the stellar classification system still familiar through the sequence O, B, A, F, G, K, M.

The Delaware reverse was designed by Donna Weaver and sculpted by Joseph Menna.

It depicts a silhouette of Annie Jump Cannon against the night sky.

Several stars and beams of light appear around her, while the inscription CLASSIFYING THE STARS summarizes her achievement.

ANNIE JUMP CANNON and DELAWARE identify the honoree and state.

The design translates an abstract scientific system into a visually recognizable astronomical scene.

Cannon’s classification work was monumental in scale.

She developed extraordinary skill at identifying stellar spectra and organized stars into a practical temperature-based sequence.

The system became a foundation of modern stellar astronomy.

Her career also reflected the important but often underrecognized scientific work performed by women at the Harvard Observatory around the turn of the twentieth century.

The Delaware dollar brought that history into a national coin series.

Pennsylvania’s coin honored a breakthrough with an immediate human impact: the development of a vaccine against polio.

Jonas Salk and his research team at the University of Pittsburgh developed the first successful inactivated polio vaccine.

Poliomyelitis had terrified American families for decades because outbreaks could cause paralysis and death, particularly among children.

The successful vaccine became one of the defining public-health achievements of the twentieth century.

A Microscope and the Polio Virus

The Pennsylvania reverse was designed by Richard Masters and sculpted by Joseph Menna.

It shows an artist’s conception of the polio virus at three levels of magnification.

A period microscope appears beside the scientific imagery.

The inscription POLIO VACCINE identifies the innovation directly.

PENNSYLVANIA and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA complete the principal inscriptions.

The Innovation program links subjects to particular jurisdictions.

Salk’s vaccine work was associated with the University of Pittsburgh, making Pennsylvania the geographic home of the achievement celebrated on the coin.

That approach allows the series to map American innovation geographically rather than simply compile a list of famous inventions.

Each state’s coin becomes an argument about a contribution rooted in that place.

The New Jersey coin honored the development of the light bulb.

Thomas Edison’s laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, became synonymous with practical electric-light development in the late 1870s.

Edison did not invent the abstract idea of electric light from nothing; many inventors had experimented with incandescent lighting.

His laboratory’s achievement was the development of a commercially practical incandescent lamp as part of a broader electrical system.

The reverse was designed by Chris Costello and sculpted by Phebe Hemphill.

It depicts an Edison bulb against an ornate background.

A series of rays suggests illumination spreading outward.

The inscriptions include UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and NEW JERSEY.

The design uses one of the most universally recognizable symbols of invention: the glowing light bulb.

Menlo Park and the Invention Factory

Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory represented a new approach to organized research and development.

Rather than the romantic image of a lone inventor working in isolation, Menlo Park brought together skilled assistants, equipment, experimentation, and systematic testing.

The model anticipated the modern industrial research laboratory.

That makes the New Jersey dollar about more than a single object. It also represents a method of turning experimentation into practical technology.

The fourth 2019 coin turned to an earlier chapter of American innovation.

Georgia’s reverse honored the Trustees’ Garden established in Savannah in the eighteenth century.

The garden was created as an experimental agricultural site where plants could be studied and cultivated for potential economic use.

It reflected the colonial era’s intense interest in botany, agriculture, trade, and adapting crops to new environments.

The Georgia reverse was designed by Emily Damstra and sculpted by Michael Gaudioso.

It depicts a hand planting seeds in soil, with young plants growing above.

Additional agricultural imagery symbolizes the experimental work associated with the Trustees’ Garden.

The inscriptions include TRUSTEES’ GARDEN and GEORGIA.

The design is intentionally different from the machinery or laboratory imagery often associated with the word “innovation.”

The Georgia coin illustrates the breadth of the series.

Innovation is not limited to electronics, computers, or modern laboratories.

Agricultural experimentation was essential to the economic development of the American colonies and early United States.

Testing crops, studying growing conditions, and exchanging botanical knowledge were forms of applied science.

The Trustees’ Garden therefore fits naturally into a series about American experimentation and problem-solving.

Placed together, the 2019 proof set demonstrated what the American Innovation program could become.

Delaware celebrated astronomical classification.

Pennsylvania celebrated a medical vaccine.

New Jersey celebrated practical electric lighting.

Georgia celebrated agricultural experimentation.

The subjects span centuries and disciplines, yet all fit beneath the broad concept of innovation.

A Dollar Series Not Intended Primarily for Circulation

By 2019, dollar coins occupied a peculiar position in American money.

The United States continued producing dollar coins, but widespread everyday circulation remained limited because the one-dollar Federal Reserve note remained dominant.

The American Innovation dollars were therefore produced principally for collectors rather than released in the massive quantities once envisioned for earlier small-dollar programs.

The proof set was explicitly a numismatic product.

The physical lineage of the coin can be traced back to the Susan B. Anthony dollar authorized in 1978.

The small-dollar diameter established for Anthony became the basic format for the Sacagawea, Native American, Presidential, and American Innovation dollars.

Compositions and colors changed, but the compact dollar format endured.

By 2019, the small dollar had evolved from a hoped-for circulating replacement for paper money into a major platform for rotating commemorative-style designs.

American Innovation dollars use the same manganese-brass clad composition associated with modern golden-colored dollar coins.

The composition is primarily copper with zinc, manganese, and nickel.

The golden appearance helps distinguish the dollar from the silver-colored quarter—one of the practical lessons learned from the poorly received Susan B. Anthony dollar.

The proof versions preserve that distinctive color while adding highly polished collector surfaces.

Offering all four annual designs in a single proof set gave collectors a convenient way to acquire the entire year.

It also encouraged the American Innovation program to be collected as a coherent chronological series rather than as isolated state issues.

With four new reverses every year, annual packaging became an important organizational tool.

The 2019 set established the pattern at the beginning of the program’s full rollout.

The Program’s Educational Potential

Many subjects chosen for Innovation dollars are less familiar than the presidents or national landmarks typically found on coins.

A collector encountering Annie Jump Cannon or the Trustees’ Garden may be prompted to investigate a person or event previously unknown to them.

That educational function is one of the strongest arguments for a long-running rotating coin program.

The coin becomes a tiny introduction to a much larger historical story.

Circulating-quality coins inevitably acquire marks from bags, rolls, counting equipment, and handling.

Proof coins are created specifically to showcase the design.

That is particularly valuable for the Innovation series because its reverses often contain fine symbolic details.

The 2019 proof set offered the first four state designs in the format most suited to close examination.

For many collectors, it became the premium version of the program’s inaugural full year.

October 11, 2019 marks the moment the American Innovation $1 Coin Program first appeared as a complete four-design annual proof set.

Inside one package, collectors could move from Annie Jump Cannon’s classification of the stars to Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, from Edison’s practical electric light to Georgia’s eighteenth-century agricultural experimentation.

The diversity was the point.

The United States has never had a single definition of innovation, and the coin series was designed to explore that breadth state by state and territory by territory.

The 2019 proof set was therefore more than four polished dollar coins. It was the first full annual chapter of a numismatic project intended to spend more than a decade mapping American ingenuity across the nation.

ALSO ON THIS DAY

2016 — Ronald Reagan Coin and Chronicles Set — The Mint opened sales for the Ronald Reagan Coin and Chronicles Set, including a reverse-proof Presidential $1 and Silver Eagle proof.