SEPTEMBER 27
2006•Rutherford B. Hayes Dollar Coin Cover News
1974•Bicentennial Coins and Medals Sales Plans Announced
The Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Coin Act Becomes Law
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On September 27, 2006, a new federal law set in motion one of the most successful United States commemorative coins of the modern era. Public Law 109-285, the Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Coin Act, required the Secretary of the Treasury to mint and issue a silver dollar in 2009 to commemorate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.
The legislation arrived more than two years before the finished coin would reach collectors, but September 27 was the decisive moment. Congress had created the legal framework for a coin honoring the 16th president on the 200th anniversary of his birth. The act established the denomination, metallic specifications, maximum mintage, design requirements, surcharge, beneficiary, and period during which the coins could be issued.
When the program finally reached the public in 2009, the Lincoln silver dollar became a remarkable success. The United States Mint’s historical sales figures record 499,934 coins sold against an authorized maximum of 500,000—virtually the entire mintage.
The law also became part of a much larger numismatic celebration. In 2009, the Mint issued four different Lincoln cent reverses depicting stages of Lincoln’s life, while the commemorative silver dollar used monumental imagery and words from the Gettysburg Address to tell a different part of the Lincoln story.
Congress Creates a Coin for Lincoln’s 200th Birthday
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in what is now LaRue County, Kentucky. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, preparations were underway for the bicentennial of his birth in 2009.
Congress chose coinage as one of the ways the nation would mark the anniversary. H.R. 2808 required the Treasury to produce a commemorative silver dollar specifically for Lincoln’s bicentennial.
The House considered and passed the measure on September 6, 2006. The Senate followed on September 8. The legislation became Public Law 109-285 on September 27.
The opening findings of the law explained why Congress believed Lincoln merited a national commemorative coin. They described him as one of the nation’s great leaders, recalled his rise from humble beginnings, emphasized his leadership during the Civil War, and highlighted the principles associated with his presidency.
For coin collectors, however, the act did much more than offer a tribute. It provided the legal instructions from which an actual United States coin would be created.
What the September 27 Law Required
Modern United States commemorative coins are not created simply because the Mint decides to produce them. Congress authorizes individual programs through legislation, defining many of the essential conditions under which the coins may be struck and sold.
The Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Coin Act authorized a one-dollar coin containing 90 percent silver and 10 percent copper, with the standard silver-dollar weight of 26.73 grams and a diameter of 1.500 inches. The maximum authorized mintage was 500,000 coins.
The law required the designs to be emblematic of Lincoln’s life and legacy and specified the customary statutory inscriptions. It also required that the coins be produced in both proof and uncirculated qualities.
Most importantly for the anniversary, the act restricted issuance to the calendar year beginning January 1, 2009. The coin was therefore inseparable from Lincoln’s bicentennial year rather than becoming an open-ended commemorative program.
A $10 Surcharge With a Historical Purpose
Congress also required a $10 surcharge on each commemorative silver dollar sold.
After the Mint recovered the program’s statutory costs and subject to federal commemorative-coin rules, qualifying surcharge proceeds were to be paid to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. The money would support the commission’s work planning bicentennial activities and encouraging continued study of Lincoln’s life.
This illustrates an important feature of the modern commemorative program. The coins are legal tender and collectible objects, but Congress often uses their surcharges to support museums, memorials, educational organizations, preservation projects, or anniversary commissions connected with the subject being honored.
In this case, buying the coin connected collectors directly with the national Lincoln bicentennial effort.
By 2006, Lincoln had appeared on the cent for nearly a century.
Victor David Brenner’s Lincoln portrait debuted on the cent in 1909, the centennial year of Lincoln’s birth. It was a major turning point in United States coin design because it placed a recognizable historical American on a regular circulating coin.
The Lincoln cent became one of the longest-running and most familiar designs in American numismatics. Generations of Americans encountered Lincoln’s portrait in everyday change long before the 2009 bicentennial arrived.
That familiarity presented an interesting challenge. A commemorative silver dollar honoring Lincoln could not simply repeat the cent and expect to feel special. Its designers needed to evoke the same person in a more monumental way while giving the reverse enough historical weight to justify the bicentennial.
The Lincoln Memorial Inspires the Obverse
The eventual obverse of the 2009 Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Silver Dollar was designed by United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program artist Justin Kunz and sculpted by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Don Everhart.
The portrait was inspired by Daniel Chester French’s famous seated statue of Lincoln inside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Rather than copying Brenner’s cent portrait, the design drew upon another of the nation’s most recognizable representations of Lincoln. The result presented Lincoln with a sense of strength and resolve appropriate to the monumental sculpture that inspired it.
The obverse inscriptions are LIBERTY, IN GOD WE TRUST, and 2009.
The design connected three different layers of Lincoln remembrance: the historical president, the national memorial erected in his honor, and the commemorative coin issued for the bicentennial of his birth.
The reverse gave the commemorative an even more distinctive identity.
Designed and sculpted by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Phebe Hemphill, it features the final 43 words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address within a laurel wreath.
Rather than relying primarily on a building, eagle, or symbolic scene, the reverse made Lincoln’s own words the central design element. The passage culminates in his declaration that government “of the people, by the people, for the people” must endure.
Above the wreath appears UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Below it, a curling banner contains Lincoln’s signature, ONE DOLLAR, E PLURIBUS UNUM, and the required denomination.
The choice made the coin as much a memorial to Lincoln’s ideas as to his likeness.
The Mint unveiled the finished designs on November 19, 2008, during the annual Dedication Day ceremony at Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The date was itself significant: November 19 marked the 145th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Unveiling a coin whose reverse carried the final words of that speech at Gettysburg on the speech’s anniversary created a direct connection among place, text, history, and coin design.
The event also demonstrated how the September 2006 legislation had evolved into a physical national commemoration. Congress had authorized the concept; artists and Mint officials had transformed that mandate into a coin.
February 12, 2009: The Coin Goes on Sale
The United States Mint scheduled public sales for February 12, 2009—Lincoln’s 200th birthday.
Proof and uncirculated versions were struck at Philadelphia. Both used the traditional 90-percent-silver commemorative composition specified for the program.
The choice of February 12 made the release itself part of the bicentennial ceremony. Collectors were not merely buying a coin dated 2009; they could order it on the exact two-hundredth anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.
The proof initially sold for $37.95 during the introductory period, while the uncirculated version was offered at $31.95. Prices later increased after the introductory sales period.
Demand proved extraordinary. The Mint ultimately records combined sales of 499,934 Abraham Lincoln commemorative silver dollars, just 66 pieces short of the law’s 500,000-coin maximum.
The silver dollar was not the only major Lincoln coinage event of 2009.
For the bicentennial, the United States Mint also issued four different reverses for the Lincoln cent, each representing a stage of Lincoln’s life.
The first depicted his birth and early childhood in Kentucky. The second represented his formative years in Indiana. The third covered his professional life in Illinois. The fourth depicted his presidency in Washington, D.C.
All four retained Brenner’s familiar Lincoln portrait on the obverse.
Together, the cents functioned almost like a four-part miniature biography. The commemorative silver dollar then approached Lincoln from another direction, using a monumental portrait and the Gettysburg Address to emphasize his national legacy.
The two programs were legally distinct, but in collectors’ hands they became natural companions.
The Lincoln Coin and Chronicles Set Brings Them Together
Later in 2009, the Mint made that relationship explicit through the Lincoln Coin and Chronicles Set.
The set contained a proof Abraham Lincoln Commemorative Silver Dollar along with proof versions of all four Lincoln Bicentennial cents. Those cents were struck in a 95-percent-copper composition recalling the metallic content of the original 1909 Lincoln cent.
The package also included reproductions of Lincoln-related historical material, including the Gettysburg Address in his handwriting and a portrait of Lincoln.
Limited to 50,000 sets, it effectively brought the year’s two major Lincoln coin programs into a single presentation.
What began with separate pieces of legislation and design processes thus became a unified numismatic portrait of Lincoln’s life and legacy.
The act’s 500,000-coin ceiling proved remarkably well matched to collector demand.
Many modern commemorative programs finish with substantial quantities of their authorized mintages unproduced. Authorization is a maximum, not a guarantee that collectors will buy every coin permitted.
The Lincoln program was different. With 499,934 sales recorded by the Mint, it came within a fraction of one percent of the statutory limit.
That result reflects several advantages the program possessed: Lincoln’s enormous historical recognition, the bicentennial timing, a popular silver-dollar format, a strong design, the Gettysburg Address reverse, and the connection with the unusual four-design Lincoln cent program.
It also means that the September 27 legislation did not merely authorize a theoretical maximum. Nearly every coin Congress permitted was ultimately absorbed by the market.
From a 1909 Cent to a 2009 Bicentennial
The 2009 celebration created a striking numismatic symmetry.
Lincoln first appeared on the cent in 1909, marking the centennial of his birth. One hundred years later, the bicentennial brought four new cent reverses and a silver commemorative dollar.
The cent remained tied to Brenner’s portrait, creating continuity with 1909. The silver dollar, by contrast, used French’s Lincoln Memorial sculpture as inspiration and the Gettysburg Address as its reverse centerpiece.
In that sense, the bicentennial coinage looked backward in several directions at once—to Lincoln’s birth in 1809, the first Lincoln cent in 1909, the Gettysburg Address in 1863, and the Lincoln Memorial that became one of the nation’s most familiar monuments.
The finished 2009 coin naturally receives most of the attention from collectors, but none of it could have happened without the legislation enacted on September 27, 2006.
That law transformed the idea of a Lincoln bicentennial coin into a federal numismatic program. It established the silver dollar, set its maximum mintage, required proof and uncirculated versions, directed the designs toward Lincoln’s life and legacy, created the surcharge, and reserved issuance for the bicentennial year.
Three years later, the program produced one of the most successful modern commemorative silver dollars, accompanied by an extraordinary redesign of the Lincoln cent and a national celebration of the president’s 200th birthday.
September 27 therefore belongs in American coin history not because a coin was struck or sold that day, but because Congress and the president created the legal foundation from which an entire Lincoln bicentennial coinage program could grow.
The law was only a few pages long. Its numismatic consequences reached millions of coins, hundreds of thousands of collectors, and one of the most ambitious Lincoln-themed years in the history of the United States Mint.
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