Federal Reserve Continues to Report $1 Coin Surplus

Under section 104 of the US Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-145), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is required to submit an annual report to Congress on the Presidential $1 Coin Program.

According to the Board’s most recent annual report, published in December 2022, Federal Reserve Banks currently hold sufficient $1 coin inventory to meet demand for nearly 16 years. The estimate reflects how long the current stock of inventory could meet demand, based on average demand over the past five years. This compares to the 2020 and 2021 reports which estimated that Reserve Banks held sufficient inventory to meet demand for nearly 21 and 19 years respectively.

A surplus of $1 coins is nothing new for the Federal Reserve, with Reserve Bank inventories peaking at 1.44 billion dollar coins in the third quarter of 2012. Production of circulating Presidential dollar coins was suspended by the Treasury Secretary previous to this, in December 2011, as part of the Obama Administration’s ‘Campaign to Cut Waste’ – aiming to save $50 million a year in storage and production costs.

Since then, inventories have continued to fall, with the most recent figures reduced to 913 and 888 million dollars in the third and fourth quarters of 2022 respectively. The Board expects that the inventories will decrease slowly over time, assuming current levels of demand continue. The Federal Reserve has said that it will continue to fulfill depository institutions’ demand for $1 coins with existing inventory, while the United States Mint will meet collector demand for new designs through direct sales.

The US Mint continues to strike clad dollar coins today, but only for numismatics sales. These include the American Innovation dollars and Native American coins – with current law requiring that 20% of all $1 coins produced each year must feature the latest Native American design. Published mintages of Native American dollar coins were 1.96 million pieces last year, split between the Denver and Philadelphia mints. The latest figures from February show a combined 2.24 million coins produced with equal splits of 1.12 million pieces from each facility.

Overall US Mint production totals – which includes cents, nickels, dimes and quarters – topped 1.05 billion in February, a drop of 10.2% from those produced in the same period last year.