Susan B. Anthony Dollars
1979-1981
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Prior to 1979, one dollar coins were the largest of the circulating coins issued by the US Mint, and through most of the 20th century the commonly-available dollar coins were the Morgan dollar, Peace dollar, and the Eisenhower dollar. The Morgan and Peace dollars were made of 90% silver, so their weight (and, therefore, their size) was proportionate to the dime, quarter, and half dollar to achieve the proper silver content. Back when a dollar could actually buy something they had a fair amount of circulation, despite their large size.
Fast forward to 1971. Morgan and Peace dollars had been withdrawn from circulation by 1964 because the price of silver made them worth more than one dollar. The new Eisenhower dollar coin was made from the same clad composition as the dime, quarter and half-dollar so is had no intrinsic value (as it would have had if it contained silver). Thanks to inflation, you had to carry at least ten pounds of one dollar coins to do any meaningful purchasing. Finally, no vending machines accepted dollar coins. For those reasons, and possibly more, a paper dollar bill was infinitely more useful to the American public than a heavy metal coin. Consequently, the Eisenhower dollar did not circulate and they piled up by the millions in treasury vaults.
A new, smaller coin was developed to replace the large Eisenhower dollar, and the Susan B Anthony dollar was introduced in 1979. Despite much promotion by the Mint, it also didn't catch on with the American public. The problems with this coin is it was very close in size to the quarter dollar, felt the same as a quarter dollar (reeded edge), and had the same composition of the quarter which made it look very similar to the quarter.
A huge first-year production of over 761,000,000 coins, a second-year production of almost 100,000,000 coins, and meager use in the first couple of years brought production to a halt in the third year. To its credit, the Mint worked with the vending machine industry, and slowly the industry responded with modernized coin acceptors to accept the new dollar coin. Among the early adopters of this coin were mass-transit systems (subways, busses, etc.). It's usually more expensive now, but for a long time a lot of cities had subway and bus rides for a buck, and the one dollar coin was perfect. However, even with slowly rising usage each year, the Anthony dollar never resumed production, so it is among the shortest coinage series from the US Mint.
This is the US Mint website for the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin.
- Designer: Frank Gasparro
- Diameter: 26.5 mm; reeded edge
- Composition: 3-layer Cupro/Nickel clad
- Outer layers of 75% copper, 25% nickel. Each outer layer is 1/4 of the total thickness of the coin.
- Inner core of pure copper; 1/2 the total thickness of the coin.
- Weight: 8.1 grams
- Mints: Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco
- Mint marks: P, D, or S on obverse, to the left of Anthony's neck.
NOTES:
- The scale of the chart is limited to 44,000,000 coins to allow the lowest quantity issues to be displayed, while accurately charting most other issues. The mint went kind of crazy with this new coin in 1979, making over 761,000,000 from all three mints that year! Actual 1979 mintages above 44,000,000 would seem to be immaterial. Data for 1979 is truncated to facilitate better chart detail of lower mintage issues.
- 1981-P, -D, & -S Anthony Dollars were issued only in 2,908,145 uncirculated mint sets. Actual coin production was somewhat more than that (and different from each mint), but the fate of the unused coins is not known.
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