SEPTEMBER 20
1966•LBJ Reappoints Eva Adams as Mint Director
2023•Greatest Generation Coin Designs Unveiled
Lyndon Johnson Reappoints Eva Adams as Director of the U.S. Mint
◆
On September 20, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson reappointed Eva Adams to a second term as the 30th Director of the United States Mint. It was more than a routine personnel decision. Adams was in the middle of one of the most turbulent transformations in modern American coinage: a nationwide coin shortage, the abandonment of traditional silver circulating coinage, the introduction of copper-nickel clad coins, the emergency expansion of Mint production, and construction of an entirely new Philadelphia Mint.
By the time Johnson renewed her appointment, Adams had already helped guide the Mint through a crisis that changed the physical composition of American pocket change. Her second term would allow her to complete much of that transition and remain long enough to preside over the opening of the new Philadelphia facility in 1969.
Few Mint directors have served during a period when so many basic features of United States coinage changed so quickly.
Eva Bertrand Adams
Eva Bertrand Adams was born in Wonder, Nevada, in 1908 and grew up in the mining communities of her home state.
Her path to the United States Mint was not through engraving, metallurgy or banking. It was through education, law and government.
Adams studied at the University of Nevada and later pursued graduate and legal education. Before joining the Mint, she spent years on Capitol Hill, working for Nevada senators and becoming an experienced congressional administrator.
That background proved valuable. The Director of the Mint was not merely the manager of coin presses. The job required dealing with Congress, the Treasury Department, budgets, legislation, construction projects, public criticism and the economic consequences of coinage policy.
President John F. Kennedy appointed Adams as the 30th Director of the Mint on September 21, 1961.
She was the second woman to hold the position, following Nellie Tayloe Ross, who had served from 1933 to 1953.
When Adams arrived, the Mint was already producing coins at record levels. According to the Mint’s historical account, annual production was approximately three billion coins when she entered office.
That enormous output would soon prove inadequate.
The Coin Shortage
By late 1963, the United States was experiencing a serious shortage of circulating coins.
The reasons were complex.
Population was growing. Commerce increasingly depended on coin-operated machines. Vending machines, parking meters, laundromats and other automated services consumed huge quantities of change.
At the same time, rising silver prices placed pressure on the traditional 90-percent-silver dime, quarter and half dollar.
Collectors and speculators were also blamed for removing coins from circulation, although the shortage had broader economic and industrial causes.
The Mint faced a simple but daunting demand: produce far more coins, and do it quickly.
Under Adams, Mint facilities moved into emergency production.
The United States Mint credits her with placing the mints on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week schedule and overseeing a crash program that dramatically expanded production capacity.
About 100 additional coinage presses were added to the 60 already operating.
Private industry was contracted to manufacture metal strip.
The Department of Defense’s Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia helped anneal and clean bronze blanks.
Mint divisions expanded to handle the increased workload.
Between July 1964 and February 1966, the Mint says its facilities produced approximately 12 billion coins.
One of the most important emergency measures was the return of the San Francisco Assay Office to large-scale coin production.
Regular coinage operations at San Francisco had ended years earlier, but the shortage forced the government to use every available source of capacity.
San Francisco began manufacturing blanks in 1964 and resumed striking circulating coins in 1965.
These coins generally carried no mint mark during the emergency period, part of a broader federal effort to discourage collectors from removing pieces from circulation solely because of their mint of origin.
The revival of San Francisco coinage would have lasting consequences. The facility later became the center of U.S. proof coin production.
Even Carson City Equipment Was Recruited
The emergency reached into numismatic history.
An old coin press from the former Carson City Mint was brought out of retirement in 1964 and sent to Denver to assist production.
The press was nearly nine decades old.
That image captures the scale of the crisis: a modern Mint fighting a 1960s coin shortage with new high-speed presses, private industrial assistance and even machinery surviving from the nineteenth-century silver-boom era.
Adams also played a central role in one of the fastest major coin redesigns in U.S. history.
President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
Within days, the Treasury and Mint began considering a circulating coin honoring him.
Mint Chief Engraver Gilroy Roberts and Assistant Engraver Frank Gasparro adapted earlier presidential-medal work to create the Kennedy half dollar.
Adams coordinated the effort with Treasury officials and the Kennedy family.
Congress authorized the new half dollar on December 30, 1963.
Production followed with extraordinary speed, and the coins entered public distribution in March 1964.
The coin shortage could not be solved simply by running presses faster.
The monetary system itself was under pressure.
For generations, U.S. dimes and quarters had been struck in 90 percent silver. Half dollars also contained 90 percent silver.
But the market value of silver was rising toward the point where the metal content of circulating coins threatened to become worth as much as, or more than, their face value.
If that happened, coins could be hoarded or melted for their bullion value.
The government therefore confronted a problem that touched economics, metallurgy, vending-machine compatibility, public confidence and congressional politics.
The Coinage Act of 1965
The solution came through the Coinage Act of 1965, signed by President Johnson on July 23.
The law removed silver entirely from the dime and quarter and replaced their traditional alloy with a copper-nickel clad composition bonded to a copper core.
The half dollar retained silver temporarily, but at a reduced 40-percent overall silver content.
The change was historic.
The Mint later described the Coinage Act of 1965 as the first major change in American coinage since the founding era.
Adams was deeply involved in the studies and administrative work that led to the transition.
Exactly one month after Johnson signed the Coinage Act, the Philadelphia Mint began producing the new clad quarters on August 23, 1965.
These were the first coins to carry the date 1965.
The new coins looked broadly familiar, but their internal construction was radically different.
Instead of a nearly solid silver alloy, the quarter used outer layers of copper-nickel bonded to a copper center.
The copper core became visible as a reddish band along the edge—one of the easiest ways to distinguish a modern clad quarter from an older silver one.
The government believed coin collecting and speculation were contributing to the shortage.
As a result, Congress and the Mint adopted extraordinary measures.
Mint marks disappeared from circulating coins for several years.
The date 1964 continued to be used on some coins struck after calendar year 1964.
Traditional proof sets and uncirculated sets were temporarily suspended so production resources could be directed toward circulation.
Special Mint Sets were offered instead from 1965 through 1967.
The goal was to make newly produced coins less attractive as collectible objects and keep them moving through commerce.
Against that backdrop, September 20, 1966 was not simply another day in the Mint director’s office.
Johnson’s decision to reappoint Adams maintained continuity while the institution was still working through the consequences of the shortage and the clad transition.
The Mint’s official timeline specifically records the date and notes that Adams was later permitted to extend her tenure into the next presidential administration so she could officiate at the opening of the new Philadelphia Mint.
Her second term therefore linked the emergency coinage years to the modernization of the Mint’s physical infrastructure.
A New Philadelphia Mint
The old Philadelphia Mint facility could not adequately meet the demands of a rapidly expanding economy.
Congress authorized a new facility in 1963.
A site near Independence Mall was selected at Fifth and Arch Streets, only blocks from the historic heart of the nation’s first capital.
Groundbreaking ceremonies were held on September 17, 1965.
Adams was closely involved in the planning, design and construction of the new building.
The project became one of the defining achievements of her tenure.
The location was not accepted without debate.
Questions arose over whether the new Mint belonged on valuable land near Independence Hall.
Adams defended the selection.
In correspondence with Congress in 1965, she argued that the Treasury Department and General Services Administration had carefully studied the issue and remained convinced that the Independence Mall location was appropriate.
The new facility would place modern coin manufacturing within sight of the neighborhood where the federal Mint had begun in 1792.
Adams’ first term had been dominated by emergency response.
Her second term increasingly demonstrated the results of those measures.
By 1967, the Mint was producing more than seven billion coins annually, and Adams reported that the general coin shortage had essentially been eliminated except for continuing problems with the half dollar.
Mint marks were authorized to return.
Proof coinage resumed in 1968, this time at San Francisco.
Regular uncirculated sets also returned.
The Mint was gradually moving from crisis conditions toward a new normal.
The absence of mint marks during the shortage years created one of the strangest episodes in modern American numismatics.
Coins that normally would have identified their manufacturing facility were deliberately made less distinguishable.
Congress later repealed the prohibition.
In January 1968, Adams participated in ceremonies at Denver marking the restoration of mint marks to U.S. coins.
She also directed that mint marks be placed on the obverse of the coins for uniformity.
Proof coins made at San Francisco now carried an S mint mark—the first time Mint proof coins had borne a mint mark.
Proof Sets Return
The restoration of proof production was another sign that the emergency had passed.
Proof sets had been suspended after 1964 as the Mint concentrated on producing enough ordinary coins for commerce.
They returned in 1968.
Demand was enormous.
By March, Adams announced that the Mint would stop accepting orders once the three-million-set production limit was reached; approximately 2.8 million sets were already being processed.
The collector market the government had temporarily tried to discourage was again being served directly.
Eva Adams’ tenure is complicated from a collector’s perspective.
The emergency removal of mint marks, suspension of proof sets and continued use of old dates were policies many collectors disliked.
Yet those decisions were made in response to a national shortage and reflected the government’s priority: coins were first and foremost tools of commerce.
At the same time, the Mint under Adams produced some of the most intensely collected modern U.S. coins, including the Kennedy half dollar and the transitional silver-to-clad issues.
The very policies intended to suppress numismatic speculation eventually created a fascinating specialized field of their own.
The new Philadelphia Mint was formally dedicated in August 1969.
Adams remained in office long enough to participate in the opening, as the Mint’s official history notes.
The building represented an enormous leap from the cramped facilities of earlier generations.
It was designed for industrial-scale production appropriate to a modern national economy.
Adams left office that same month, ending nearly eight years as Director.
The Second Woman to Lead the Mint
Adams’ career also belongs to the broader history of women in federal leadership.
Nellie Tayloe Ross had broken the barrier when Franklin Roosevelt appointed her Director of the Mint in 1933.
Adams became the second woman to hold the office.
Later women directors included Mary Brooks, Stella Hackel Sims, Donna Pope and Henrietta Holsman Fore, while Ventris Gibson became the first African American director in 2022.
Adams’ tenure helped establish what the Mint itself has described as a long tradition of women serving in its highest office.
The consequences of Adams’ administration are not confined to museums or rare coins.
They remain visible in everyday American change.
The copper-nickel clad dime and quarter introduced during the 1965 transition established the basic metallic system still familiar today.
Look at the edge of a modern quarter and the copper-colored center is a direct descendant of the solution adopted during the coin shortage Adams helped manage.
Modern proof production at San Francisco also traces its institutional roots to the reorganization of the 1960s.
The Philadelphia Mint she helped build remains one of the central facilities of U.S. coin production.
September 20, 1966 marks President Lyndon B. Johnson’s reappointment of Eva Adams to a second term as the 30th Director of the United States Mint.
By then, Adams had already faced a remarkable sequence of challenges: the Kennedy half dollar, a severe national coin shortage, around-the-clock production, the return of San Francisco to coin manufacturing, the end of traditional silver dimes and quarters, and the introduction of clad coinage.
Her second term allowed her to guide the Mint out of emergency conditions, restore familiar collector programs and mint marks, and oversee completion of the new Philadelphia Mint.
For numismatists, her administration forms the dividing line between two eras.
Before Adams’ crisis years, silver still dominated America’s higher-denomination pocket change. By the end of her tenure, clad coinage had become normal, San Francisco had assumed its modern proof role, and the Philadelphia Mint had entered a new industrial age.
September 20, 1966 ensured that the same director who had helped manage that transformation would remain in office to see much of it through.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
2023 — Greatest Generation Coin Designs Unveiled — The U.S. Mint unveiled designs for the 2024 Greatest Generation commemorative coin program at the National World War II Memorial.