Susan B. Anthony Dollar

History

Congress created the small dollar in 1978 over the Treasury Department's objections to its subject. The authorizing bill passed the House on September 26, 1978 and was signed by President Carter on October 10, with the vending machine industry among the constituencies pushing for a circulating dollar. Treasury had wanted an allegorical Liberty, and Chief Engraver Frank Gasparro prepared models along those lines, but Representative Mary Rose Oakar of Ohio led a campaign to place the suffragist and civil rights leader Susan B. Anthony on the coin instead, backed by the League of Women Voters, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the National Organization for Women and the American Association for University Women; Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal argued against what he called the politization of the coinage and lost. Six months of accelerated striking at Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco built a stock of more than 500 million pieces before the July 1979 release, and the public rejected the coin almost at once because its 26.5 mm diameter and silvery color were too close to the Washington quarter, earning it the nicknames "Carter Quarter" and "Agony Dollar." Mintages collapsed in 1980, 1981 production went only into uncirculated and proof sets, and striking stopped until 1999, when the Mint needed dollar coins for vending and transit use while the Sacagawea dollar, legislated on December 1, 1997 with a mandate for a golden color and a distinctive edge, was being prepared.

Details

Frank Gasparro designed both sides. The coin measures 26.50 mm, weighs 8.10 grams, has a reeded edge, and is struck in a copper-nickel clad of 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel bonded to a pure copper core, a composition unchanged from 1979 through 1999. Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco all struck the type, with P, D and S mint marks respectively; the 1979-P was the first small dollar produced at Philadelphia, and San Francisco handled collector proofs from 1979 through 1981 while the 1999 proofs came from Philadelphia and were sold individually. The 1979-P has the highest mintage of the series, while 1981 saw only 3 million pieces from Philadelphia for collector sets. The 1999 revival produced 29,592,000 business strikes at Philadelphia, a figure dwarfed the following year by roughly 1.5 billion golden dollars.

Features

The obverse carries a portrait of Susan B. Anthony, the subject Congress substituted for Gasparro's rejected Liberty models. The planchet is round with a reeded edge. Three varieties draw the most attention: the 1979-P exists with a narrow rim and with a wide rim, the latter placing the date noticeably closer to the edge and listed separately by PCGS, and the 1979-S proofs divide into Type 1 with a filled, mushy S and Type 2 with a clear one. The 1981-S proofs likewise include a Type 2 mint mark, distinguished by clearer, more bulbous serifs than the 1979-style punch used on most of that year's proofs. Minor doubled dies and repunched mint marks circulate among specialists as well.

Notable facts

• The Anthony dollar was the first circulating United States coin to depict an actual woman and the first clad small dollar issued by the Mint.
• Proof issues of the type are effectively all deep cameo, and the handful of non-cameo entries in population reports date from before the grading services began applying the designation to the series.
• NGC has certified close to 10,000 examples of the 1979-S dollar, roughly 99 percent of them with the Ultra Cameo designation.
• The 1999-P business strike is easy to find uncirculated and only becomes somewhat scarce at MS67, while MS68 examples number fewer than a few dozen at PCGS with none certified finer.
• Proof mintages include 3,677,175 for the 1979-S Type 1 and 740,000 for the 1999-P.
• Neither major grading service applies a strike designation to this type comparable to Full Bands or Full Steps on other modern series.