Coin Blog

The mintage figures have been released for the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Dollar. This coin was first released into circulation by the United States Mint on May 19, 2011 as the 18th issue of the series overall.

As remarked frequently on this site, the broader series has experienced a general decline in mintage levels for each subsequent release. This has been briefly interrupted by some releases, which promised an upswing, but the next release would invariably hit another fresh low.

Recently, the coins featuring Abraham Lincoln experienced a big increase, and the next coins featuring Andrew Johnson struck another fresh low.

Ulysses S. Grant marks another blip upwards at 76.02 million coins across the Philadelphia and Denver Mint facilities. This exceeds the mintage of 72.66 million for Andrew Johnson.

The higher numbers could be the result of Grant's greater level of popularity. Since is better known to Americans, the US Mint may have planned higher production in anticipation of higher coin orders from the Federal Reserve Banks.

For the next release featuring Rutherford B. Hayes, the general downtrend may resume.

The US Mint has indicated the preliminary production figures for the Gettysburg National Military Park Quarter. If no further coins are produced, this will be the lowest mintage of the new quarter program for the series to date.

The Philadelphia Mint struck 30.4 million coins and the Denver mint struck 30.8 million coins. That makes for a combined total of 61.2 million.

The previous mintage low for the America the Beautiful Quarters Program was held by the Yellowstone National Park Quarter, which had a combined circulation mintage of 68.4 million.

It's possible that the US Mint might make more Gettysburg Quarters before the end of the year, or that other 2011 issues will have even lower mintages. This makes the current low figures less important, although on a historical basis, this is a fraction of the typical circulating coin production for the quarter.

Preliminary mintage figures are now available for all of the 2010 America the Beautiful Quarters. Note that the figures are preliminary, since the US Mint has reserved the right to resume striking any 2010-dated issue until the end of the year.

The lowest mintage overall is currently for the 2010-P Yellowstone Quarter at 33.6 million. The highest mintage is for the 2010-D Grand Canyon Quarter at 35.4 million. From only the slight difference between the low and the high, it can be seen that all mintages fall within a very tight range.

The total production of 2010 quarters is only 321.44 million across all designs. This is about half of last year's production of 636.2 million and well below the levels of the State Quarters Program, which had peaked at 6.47 billion in 2000.

An oddity with the low mintages for the new series is that a significant percentage are ending up directly in the hands of collectors or dealers. Enticed by the low mintages and the start of a new series, many rolls, bags, and bulk bags have been purchased and are being held. If the low mintages fail to drive higher prices, many of these may eventually find their way into circulation.

The US Mint has provided the final production figures for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Dollar. This is the fourth and final release of the year, as well as the 16th release of the series.

The general trend for the Presidential Dollars series has been for declining mintages. However, with the Lincoln Dollar, the trend is broken or at least interrupted. Across both mint facilities, there were 97,020,000 produced. This is up from 73,360,000 for the prior issue featuring James Buchanan.

The Philadelphia Mint struck 49 million Abraham Lincoln Dollars and the Denver Mint struck 48.02 million. These are the highest totals since early in 2009.

For the entire series, there have now been more than 2 billion Presidential Dollars produced. That's a lot for a coin that doesn't seem to circulate.

A strange thing happened last month, the mintages for previously released America the Beautiful Quarters have increased. For the previous State Quarters Program, the US Mint would complete production of one design and then move onto the next. For the present series, the Mint reserves the right to go back to previous designs and strike more coins.

As a result, the previously lowest mintage coin of the program so far, the Hot Springs Quarter, has been bumped up by 10 million. This makes the Yellowstone Quarter now the lowest mintage, unless the US Mint decides to strike some more of those, too.

The updated America the Beautiful Quarters mintages appear below.