SEPTEMBER 7
2006•American Eagle Palladium
2012•5-Star Generals Commemorative Coin Designs Approved
The San Francisco Old Mint Commemorative Coins Go on Sale
◆
On September 7, 2006, the United States Mint began selling the San Francisco Old Mint Commemorative Coin Program, issuing a $5 gold coin and a silver dollar to honor one of the most storied buildings in American coinage history. The program marked the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire and celebrated the granite-and-sandstone fortress popularly known as the “Granite Lady,” a building whose survival helped protect federal gold reserves and provided an important center of relief during the disaster.
The two commemoratives looked backward in unusually direct ways. The silver dollar’s obverse depicted the Old Mint building itself, while its reverse revived the eagle-and-shield design used on the 1904 Morgan dollar. The $5 gold coin showed the Old Mint on its reverse, but its obverse adapted Christian Gobrecht’s Coronet Liberty design from the nineteenth-century gold half eagle.
Both coins were struck at the modern San Francisco Mint and carried the S mint mark. Congress authorized maximum mintages of 100,000 gold coins and 500,000 silver dollars across proof and uncirculated versions. Sales opened on September 7, giving collectors a numismatic memorial to a mint that had survived one of the worst urban disasters in American history.
The “Granite Lady”
The building honored by the 2006 coins was the second United States Mint facility in San Francisco. The original San Francisco Branch Mint had opened in 1854, only a few years after the California Gold Rush transformed the region and flooded the federal monetary system with western gold.
As production demands grew, the government constructed a much larger replacement. Designed under Supervising Architect Alfred B. Mullett, the imposing Classical Revival structure opened for coinage operations in 1874.
Its massive construction helped give rise to the nickname “Granite Lady,” although much of the building’s exterior material is sandstone. The nickname nevertheless became inseparable from the Old Mint’s identity.
For decades, the building processed enormous quantities of western precious metal and struck coins carrying the S mint mark. It stood as a physical symbol of the relationship between California’s mineral wealth and the nation’s monetary system.
April 18, 1906: Earthquake and Fire
At approximately 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a massive earthquake struck Northern California. San Francisco suffered catastrophic damage. Broken gas lines, damaged water mains and overturned stoves helped ignite fires that burned for days.
The Old Mint survived the earthquake itself, but fire soon threatened the building.
Mint employees and others fought to save it. With municipal water supplies crippled, they relied in part on the Mint’s own well and hoses to battle flames and prevent the fire from consuming the structure.
Their success mattered far beyond preserving a historic building. The Mint held enormous federal reserves of gold and other assets. Had the structure burned, the financial and material loss would have compounded an already overwhelming disaster.
The Old Mint’s role did not end when the flames were stopped. In the devastated city, it became part of the recovery effort.
San Francisco’s commercial infrastructure had been shattered. Banks and businesses were closed or damaged, transportation was disrupted, and thousands of residents had lost homes and possessions.
The Mint’s survival provided a secure federal facility in the middle of the catastrophe. Contemporary and later accounts emphasize its role in safeguarding bullion and supporting the financial functioning of the city during the emergency.
That history is why the 2006 commemorative program was more than an architectural tribute. Congress was commemorating an institution that had physically survived the disaster and helped San Francisco endure its aftermath.
The San Francisco Old Mint Commemorative Coin Act
Congress authorized the program through the San Francisco Old Mint Commemorative Coin Act, signed into law in 2006.
The legislation called for two denominations: up to 100,000 $5 gold coins and up to 500,000 silver dollars. Each denomination could be produced in proof and uncirculated versions, with all versions counting toward the respective statutory maximum.
The program also included surcharges. Net surcharge proceeds were designated for preservation and restoration work associated with the Old Mint and for educational and museum-related uses tied to the building.
Modern commemorative programs frequently combine historical recognition with fundraising. The Old Mint program was particularly direct: collectors buying coins depicting the historic structure could help support efforts to preserve that same structure.
The 2006-P? No—the San Francisco commemorative silver dollar was struck at San Francisco and bears the S mint mark. Its obverse depicts the Old Mint building, giving the architecture itself center stage.
The design was created by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Joseph Menna. The inscriptions identify the SAN FRANCISCO OLD MINT and include the date 2006, LIBERTY and IN GOD WE TRUST.
The building’s façade is rendered in the compact space of a silver dollar, turning nineteenth-century federal architecture into numismatic relief.
This was a fitting choice because the structure, rather than a single individual, was the true subject of the program. Its survival in 1906 had become part of San Francisco legend.
A Morgan Dollar Eagle on the Reverse
The silver dollar reverse makes an especially strong connection to the Old Mint’s active coinage years.
It reproduces the reverse design of the 1904 Morgan dollar, including the eagle with outstretched wings, wreath and shield imagery familiar to generations of collectors. The adaptation was executed for the commemorative by Mint Sculptor-Engraver Joseph Menna.
The choice of 1904 was deliberate. Morgan dollars dated 1904-S had been struck at the Old San Francisco Mint only two years before the earthquake.
By placing a Morgan-style eagle on the 2006 commemorative, the Mint linked the centennial coin to actual coinage produced inside the historic building near the end of the pre-earthquake era.
For collectors, that connection made the silver dollar almost a conversation between two centuries: a modern commemorative minted in San Francisco carrying the architectural image of the Old Mint on one side and the design language of a classic San Francisco silver dollar on the other.
The gold commemorative used another historic design reference.
Its obverse adapts Christian Gobrecht’s Coronet Liberty from the classic half eagle. Liberty wears a coronet inscribed LIBERTY, recalling the $5 gold coins that circulated during the nineteenth century and were struck in San Francisco during the Old Mint era.
The modern adaptation was created by United States Mint Sculptor-Engraver Charles L. Vickers.
Rather than inventing a completely new portrait, the program deliberately revived an image that would have been at home on American gold coinage when the Old Mint was new. That gave the commemorative a historical texture difficult to achieve with a wholly contemporary design.
The Old Mint on the Gold Coin Reverse
The reverse of the $5 gold coin depicts the Old Mint building and was designed and sculpted by Joseph Menna.
The composition places the historic structure opposite Gobrecht’s nineteenth-century Liberty, uniting the building with the style of gold coinage it once produced.
Gold was especially appropriate for the San Francisco Mint story. The branch mint had been established because the California Gold Rush created an urgent need to convert locally mined gold into standardized federal coinage. Transporting raw gold across the continent was difficult and risky. A mint in San Francisco allowed bullion to be assayed, refined and coined much closer to its source.
Thus the 2006 gold commemorative was not simply a premium version of the silver dollar. Its metal itself was historically connected to the reason a federal mint existed in San Francisco.
Both denominations were available in proof and uncirculated collector versions.
Proof coins are specially manufactured for collectors using prepared dies and planchets and controlled striking methods that produce sharply defined details and distinctive surfaces. Uncirculated commemoratives are also collector products but receive a different finish and production treatment.
Offering both formats allowed collectors to pursue a four-coin set: proof and uncirculated silver dollars plus proof and uncirculated $5 gold pieces.
The coins were struck at the current San Francisco Mint rather than inside the historic Old Mint building. That distinction is essential. The commemoratives honored the old structure, but their S mint marks identify modern San Francisco production.
Two San Francisco Mints in One Story
The 2006 program therefore links two different San Francisco Mint buildings.
The commemorated “Granite Lady” opened in the nineteenth century and survived the 1906 catastrophe. Coinage operations eventually moved to a newer facility, completed in the 1930s on Hermann Street.
The modern San Francisco Mint struck the centennial commemoratives honoring its predecessor.
In a sense, one generation of the institution commemorated another. The S mint mark remained, but the physical place represented on the coin was the earlier building that had once produced some of the most famous western U.S. coinage.
The Morgan dollar connection deserves special attention because San Francisco is one of the central mint marks in the series.
Morgan dollars were struck at San Francisco from 1878 through 1904 and again in 1921. Many S-mint Morgans are celebrated for strong strikes and attractive surfaces, although rarity varies dramatically by date.
The Old Mint produced these large silver dollars during the height of the nineteenth-century silver-coinage era. The 1904-S Morgan dollar, struck shortly before the earthquake, became the specific historical design reference for the commemorative silver dollar reverse.
That makes the 2006 silver dollar especially appealing to collectors who view Mint buildings not merely as architecture but as the birthplace of particular classic coins.
By 2006, the Old Mint was no longer an operating coin factory, but its historical importance was widely recognized. Preserving such a massive nineteenth-century federal building in downtown San Francisco required substantial resources.
The commemorative program turned numismatic interest into a preservation mechanism. Surcharges from coin sales could support restoration and museum development.
This reflects one of the more constructive possibilities of commemorative coin legislation. A coin can honor a historical site while simultaneously directing funds toward keeping that site accessible to future generations.
Collectors were therefore buying more than a symbolic depiction of the Old Mint. Their purchases were connected to the continuing physical survival of the landmark.
The Centennial Context
The coins appeared in 2006 because the year marked a century since the earthquake and fire.
San Francisco held numerous centennial observances, and public attention returned to stories of destruction, survival and rebuilding. The Old Mint was a natural subject because it embodied all three.
It stood before the earthquake. It survived when much of the surrounding city burned. And it remained as a physical witness to San Francisco’s recovery.
By placing the building on both denominations, the Mint transformed that survival story into a portable national memorial.
September 7, 2006 was the public sales launch of the San Francisco Old Mint commemorative program. Collectors could order silver and gold coins that deliberately blended modern commemorative production with imagery from the Mint’s nineteenth-century past.
The silver dollar depicted the Old Mint and revived the reverse of the 1904 Morgan dollar. The $5 gold coin paired the building with an adaptation of Christian Gobrecht’s Coronet Liberty. Both carried the S mint mark of San Francisco.
The coins honored more than a building. They commemorated the employees who fought to save it, the federal treasure protected within it, the Mint’s role in a devastated city, and the long history of turning western gold and silver into United States coinage.
A century after earthquake and fire threatened the Granite Lady, the United States Mint placed its image back onto coins bearing San Francisco’s S—this time not as products of the old building, but as tributes to its survival.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
2012 — 5-Star Generals Commemorative Coin Designs Approved — Treasury approved the designs for the 2013 5-Star Generals commemorative coin program.