Susie B. Turns 45

On July 2, 1979, the Susan B. Anthony Dollar premiered to much fanfare, and the world of modern coinage would never be the same. Forty-five years on, we can see the Susan B. Anthony Dollar was certainly a coin for its time, providing a visible platform for the first portrait of a historic woman on a circulating U.S. coin at a time when the Equal Rights Amendment was still on rounds collecting votes – if only failing to gain enough before it expired for consideration in 1982.

Coincidentally also off the radar by 1982, the Susan B. Anthony Dollar inspired high hopes upon its debut… Hopes that a new generation of women would finally see themselves on circulating U.S. coinage… Hopes that Americans would trade in their folding dollar bills for brand-new mini dollar coins… Hopes that the U.S. federal government would save millions of dollars over the course of time by swapping out short-lived dollar bills for dollar coins that could last decades in circulation.

High Hopes

The U.S. has a long, if erratic, history of producing dollar coinage going back to 1794, when the first silver dollars rolled off the mint’s presses. Dollar coinage came and went over the next two centuries that followed, with Morgan and Peace Dollars the most popular, at least among U.S. coin collectors. Yet after the last Peace Dollars were struck in 1935, the U.S. Mint would abandon all official production of dollar coins for more than three decades. When the Eisenhower Dollar entered the scene in 1971, it became the first U.S. dollar piece to be produced for circulation in a copper-nickel-clad format. There were also hopes the large-size coin might have a life beyond the slot machine circuit in Nevada.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be. By the mid-’70s, it was evident that the Ike Dollar was seeing relatively little time in general circulation. In 1976, Research Triangle Institute conducted a study on U.S. coinage and concluded that, “A conveniently sized dollar coin would significantly broaden the capabilities of consumers for cash transactions, especially with machines. Members of the automatic merchandising industry have expressed a strong interest in a smaller dollar, indicating their willingness to adapt their machinery to its use.”

There was plenty of incentive to embark on a smaller-sized dollar coin. Government officials estimated nearly $20 million could be saved if even half of the issued dollar bills were replaced with a smaller-sized dollar coin. The cost savings came down to the longevity of paper dollar bills versus dollar coins, with the folding dollars lasting just 18 to 24 months and dollar coinage enduring an average of 30 years in circulation.

Before long, U.S. Mint officials began planning for production of the new mini dollar, even though formal legislation authorizing such a coin had yet to hit the floors of Congress. Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal threw his support behind the new small-sized dollar, even suggesting that the proposed coin sport an image of Miss Liberty.

United States Mint Chief Engraver Frank Gasparro was appointed to the project of designing the new mini dollar, crafting a model that depicted a young Miss Liberty on the obverse. The reverse showcased an eagle soaring above a mountain awash in the light of the rising Sun; as Gasparro told numismatic writer David Ganz in a 1976 COINage article, the design symbolized “a new day being born.” The pairing of Miss Liberty and the flying eagle earned blessings from Fine Arts Commission member J. Carter Brown, who wrote, “I believe this would be a superb design for United States Coinage, rooted as it is in a great tradition, being based on the Liberty Cap cent of 1794, following Augustin Dupré's Libertas Americana medal commemorating Saratoga and Yorktown (1777–1781).”

Months later, in May 1978, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives formally proposing the reduction in the size of the dollar coin from 38 millimeters in diameter to 26.5 millimeters, the weight of the coin paring down from 22.68 grams to just 8.5 grams. The Senate later revised the weight down to 8.1 grams and clarified the coin should be round in shape but carry an 11-sided inner border on its rim, the latter helping the coin feel more distinctive from other circulating coinage in the hands of someone with visual disabilities.

Changes…

While the Treasury department championed Gasparro’s take on the mini dollar carrying likenesses of Miss Liberty and the soaring eagle, others envisioned taking the new coin in a different direction. Amid the hopes for gender equality in the 1970s, there were many calls from the public to place a historical woman on the new mini dollar instead of an allegorical representation of Liberty. Many names were floated, but suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony was a top choice of many, including members of the National Organization for Women, the Congresswomen’s Caucus, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the League of Women Voters.

Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire filed legislation in May 1978 requiring the design of the mini dollar to feature Susan B. Anthony. As Susan B. Anthony Dollar legislation began wending its way through the halls of Congress, Gasparro set out on creating a motif for the new coin that captured the women’s rights leader in just the right way. Gasparro utilized the few available images of Anthony and insights from the social reformer’s great niece to create a portrait showcasing the leader at the peak of her influence, when she was about 50 years old.

Gasparro’s intention was to pair the Susan B. Anthony obverse with the reverse showing his soaring eagle design, but that wasn’t meant to be. As the bill authorizing the new dollar coin was rounding its way to the finish line, Utah Senator Jake Garn added a late amendment requiring the reverse to carry the Apollo 11 insignia that had been seen on the reverse of the Eisenhower Dollar since 1971. Congress approved the legislation, and President Jimmy Carter signed the bill into law on October 10, 1978, saying, “I am particularly pleased that the new dollar coin will – for the first time in history – bear the image of a great American woman. The life of Susan B. Anthony exemplifies the ideals for which our country stands. The ‘Anthony dollar’ will symbolize for all American women the achievement of their unalienable right to vote. It will be a constant reminder of the continuing struggle for the equality of all Americans.”

Stepping Out

Government officials had every reason to believe the new mini dollar—the first widely circulating U.S. coin depicting a historical woman—would be a big hit with the public. Therefore, the U.S. Mint began striking some 500 million of the 1979-dated coins in December 1978, giving plenty of time for a head start on the anticipated release of the coins in the summer of 1979.

Production began in earnest at the Philadelphia Mint during the holiday season of 1978; the Philadelphia emissions of the Susan B. Anthony Dollar carried the “P” mintmark, making them the first U.S. coins to do so since World War II, when Philly-struck 35% silver wartime Jefferson five-cent coins produced from 1942 through 1945 boasted a large “P” mintmark on the reverse. It was a harbinger of things to come, as all circulating Philadelphia-minted coins of denominations greater than one cent routinely began sporting the “P” mintmark in 1980.

As the U.S. Mint was ramping up production of the new coin in the early months of 1979, the Treasury Department launched a marketing campaign aimed at educating the public about the many benefits of the new coin, including its convenient size and the coin’s projected cost savings to taxpayers. Meanwhile, players in the vending machine industry began retrofitting machines to accommodate the new dollar coin.

The Susan B. Anthony Dollar was released on July 2, 1979, with much fanfare from coast to coast, including a special ceremony in Rochester, New York, where Anthony lived during her most prominent years as a women’s rights leader. But public enthusiasm for the new dollar coin quickly waned as those who were using it began noticing a major flaw: the coin too closely resembled the quarter. The discovery may not have come as a shock to those who realized that both the round, copper-nickel-clad coins had a difference in diameter of just barely more than two millimeters, with the quarter coming in at 24.3 millimeters and the dollar at 26.5 millimeters.

Confusion between the quarter and dollar drove public dissatisfaction with the Susie B., with many calling the coin the “Carter Quarter” due to its size and close association with President Carter, who had signed the mini dollar into law. By October 1979, a Gallup poll had shown that 66% of Americans disliked the Susan B. Anthony Dollar, with only 15% favoring it and 19% reserving judgment.

The U.S. Mint and U.S. Treasury considered a range of ideas, including increasing the diameter of the coin, changing its color or shape, and even punching a hole in the middle of the coin. Funds were approved for a new educational and promotional campaign that hit the streets by 1980, but none of these efforts resulted in the coin winning the public over – especially given the fact that Americans still had the alternative of using the paper dollar, which concurrently remained in production with the Anthony Dollar.

The proof of the coin’s failure was reflected in the coin’s overall mintage figures year over year during its initial run, with 757,813,744 circulation strikes cumulatively produced by the Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco Mints in 1979 versus only 89,660,708 in 1980, and just 9,742,000 in 1981, with the latter reportedly struck only for numismatic purposes. By the end of the coin’s original outing in 1981, more than a half billion were deemed as surplus pieces with nowhere to go but vaults.

Encore!

The coin may have flopped during the disco era, but by the time the 1980s were running at full tilt, fortunes had changed for the coin. In 1984, the Baltimore Metro system began using the Susan B. Anthony Dollar as tokens that riders could use to buy tickets, eventually becoming the single-biggest user of the coin. Other metro systems similarly adopted the use of Susie B. dollars, with the United States Postal Service introducing stamp-vending machines in the early 1990s that accepted and dispensed Susan B. Anthony Dollars. By the mid-1990s, the number of Susan B. Anthony Dollars in government vaults began dwindling, with only around 133 million remaining by the end of 1997.

By that time, legislation for the new “golden dollar” (to eventually bear the obverse portrait of Lemhi Shoshone woman Sacagawea) was already rounding the bend toward becoming law by the stroke of President Bill Clinton’s pen. But the incoming Sacagawea Dollar wouldn’t arrive until 2000 – too late to satisfy the more immediate needs of new dollar coinage. This necessitated a revival of the Susan B. Anthony Dollar in 1999, which was produced to the tune of 41,368,000 combined circulation strikes by the Philadelphia and Denver Mints.

When the curtain officially fell on the coin after its swan song in 1999, the Susan B. Anthony Dollar had proven to be one of the shortest-lived series in American numismatics. Yet, it offers a story like none other and is unapologetically a product of its era, it being symbolic of new ideas, unconventional solutions, and the hope – in its own way – to afford a sense of social justice and representation to a large segment of the American public that had not seen itself on circulating U.S. coinage.

Many panned the seemingly incongruous pairing of an obverse portrait honoring a 19th-century women’s rights leader and a reverse motif depicting the landing of the first men on the Moon in 1969. Yet, Gasparro noted the historical significance of the coin, calling it his “top achievement.” He said that the Susan B. Anthony Dollar had “become part of a social movement.” Gasparro concluded, “This new dollar's more than a coin; it's an issue.”

Collecting the Susan B. Anthony Dollar

At first glance, collecting the Susan B. Anthony Dollar series might seem to be a relatively straightforward endeavor. There is the trinity of Philadelphia-Denver-San Francisco issues from 1979 through 1981, along with the binary of Philly and Denver strikes from 1999 and the four proofs from each year the series was minted. But look a little deeper and the surprising complexity of this modern series comes to light.

There are several major varieties counted among the Susan B. Anthony Dollar, including the relatively scarce 1979-P Wide Rim, not to mention the 1979-S and 1981-S Type I and Type II proofs. The 1979-P Wide Rim resulted from design modifications that the U.S. Mint made to the rim of the obverse die in late 1979. The changes impacted only the 1979-P Dollars, with a relatively small but unknown sum seeing the wider-rim format. For example, some coins grading PCGS MS65 trade for around $65.

The 1979-S and 1981-S proof varieties stemmed from modifications to the “S” mintmark, which appears blobby on the 1979-S Type I proofs. Efforts to better clarify the shape of the “S” created the 1979-S Type II proofs, which came along later that year, are slightly scarcer than their Type I counterparts. While the 1979-S Type I proof retails for around $11 in PCGS PR68DCAM, the 1979-S Type II in that same grade takes closer to $40.

The differences in price between the 1981-S Type I and Type II proofs, involving further refinements to the crispness of the “S” mintmark, with the Type II sporting more bulbous serifs than the Type I, are even more stark. The 1981-S Type I proof fetches about $11 in PCGS PR68DCAM, whereas the much scarcer 1981-S Type II proof is a $90 coin in that same grade.

PCGS Set Registry members who want to dominate the set ratings will find the Susan B. Anthony Dollar series to be both challenging and expensive to collect in top grades. Examples in the grades of PCGS MS67 or better routinely take substantial three-figure prices. Some auction records for the Susie B. traipse into four-figure territory. Auction records bear this out, with a PCGS MS68 specimen of the 1979-S notching $3,760 in a 2017 Heritage Auctions showing, a 1980-P in PCGS MS68 garnering $4,600 in a 2008 Heritage Auctions offering, and a 1981-S MS67 hammering at $4,465 in 2017 in yet another Heritage Auctions outing. Even the 1999 emissions are scarce in MS68, with a 1999-P going for $1,920 in a 2022 Heritage Auctions event.

What this boils down to for collectors is quite clear: the Susan B. Anthony Dollar is worth a look. As the series turns 45 years old and marches toward life as a truly vintage coin, numismatists have the opportunity to jump in on a series that, for too long, was underappreciated by many but has aged gracefully over time. More collectors who were born in the latter decades of the 20th century and remember the novelty of the Susan B. Anthony Dollar – perhaps receiving the coin as holiday gifts from parents or grandparents or finding the mini dollar left under the pillow by the Tooth Fairy – are returning to the coin they grew up with. While the Susan B. Anthony Dollar may never enjoy the numismatic fame of its silver predecessors, such as the Morgan and Peace Dollars of yore, it really doesn't have to. It’s finding a fanbase all its own and finally enjoying its well-deserved time in the spotlight.