Skip to content

Shortage of Circulating Coins Points to the Likelihood of New Coin Designs by 2022

Posted by 1st American Reserve on

Due to the coronavirus, there have been sporadic work stoppages at the U.S. Mint. This has caused a shortage of many fractional issues of the Gold American Eagle coins, as I have written before, but it has also caused a shortage of circulating coins as well. As a result, there is now a national project (called “The Cent Project”) to take a census of Lincoln cents – a private effort estimated to involve 44,000 volunteer coin counters throughout the nation to sort through 220 million cents between now and May 2021, sorting by mint mark and date. This would represent only about 1% of all the 22 billion Lincoln Memorial cents in circulation, but it would give the Mint a rough idea of the distribution of Lincoln pennies in circulation.

This shortage of coins in circulation could also help to spur the development of a new coin design to help celebrate the time when we emerge from the COVID shutdown. In this transitional time in our history, it would be a perfect time to place a woman or two on our major circulating coins, preferably on the obverse (front), but at least on the reverse.  Here are two ideas, tied to their upcoming Bicentennial birthdays:

  • Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was born on December 25, 1821, and
  • Harriet Tubman, a leading abolitionist and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, was born around March 1822 (her precise birth date is uncertain).

Both of these women would be perfect candidates for new coinage in 2021-22 as a bicentennial tribute. 

Adding a woman’s face to a circulating coin for the penny, nickel or quarter would bring it into the hands of many children, causing them to learn more about American history and encouraging more new collectors. History shows that a new coin in circulation also generates more new coin collectors of the old series.

And speaking of 2021, it’s looking increasingly likely that we will see a new Morgan Silver Dollar issued next year, in honor of the centennial celebration of the popular 1921 “transition year” of the last Morgan Dollar issued (in 1921) and the birth of the new Peace Dollar that same year. This would make next year a banner “coming out” year for the Mint as they emerge from these COVID-19 shutdowns. 

The Morgan Silver Dollar is the most popular numismatic coin series. Issuing a new centennial silver dollar in 2021 will create even more interest in coin collecting and investing in precious metal coinage.  Call “Team Mike” to learn more about this exciting new development.

 

Trackbacks

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as Linear | Threaded

No comments

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.
To leave a comment you must approve it via e-mail, which will be sent to your address after submission.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

Form options