UPDATED: THE MINT WILL SELL YOU 25 DOLLARS FOR $61 — THE TRUMP COIN IS A COLLECTIBLE, NOT CIRCULATION — AND COOLIDGE BEAT HIM TO IT BY A HUNDRED YEARS
At noon Eastern the U.S. Mint opens sales on the 2026 Semiquincentennial President Donald J. Trump $1 Coin. Here is the price list from the Mint's own release. A roll of 25 of these dollar coins costs $61.00. A bag of 100 costs $154.50. Set those against the number stamped on the coin. The government will sell you dollars at about a dollar fifty-five each, and about two forty-four in the smaller box. Two per household for the first 24 hours.
The version going around this morning says this is the first time a sitting president has appeared on a circulating U.S. coin, and that the coins are already in circulation. Both halves are wrong. The Mint's release calls these “numismatic products” — rolls and bags sold to collectors, not coins pushed out through the banks. And Calvin Coolidge was on the 1926 Sesquicentennial half dollar while he was the sitting president, struck for the country's 150th birthday. This one is struck for the 250th. A hundred years apart, the same idea.
What changed in that hundred years is what ends up in your hand. The 1926 coin was ninety percent silver. It did not need anyone's word for it; you could weigh the thing. This one is worth more than a dollar for exactly one reason, which is that the Mint has decided to stop making it. Scarcity by press release.
Read the authority line at the bottom of the release: 31 U.S.C. 5112 and a 2020 act of Congress. That is the whole difference. This coin exists in the quantity a law permits, at a price the issuer sets, under a household limit somebody can change on a Tuesday. Twenty-one million is not a policy, and there is nobody to call.
UPDATE, 11:05 AM ET. Two things came in after we published, and one of them sharpens this piece against us.
First, the Mint settles the circulation question in its own words. The product page for these rolls and bags reads: “The coins—minted at the Philadelphia Mint—have circulating finishes but have never been placed into circulation. However, they may be still used as legal tender.” That is the seller saying it plainly. The same page gives the metal: 6 percent zinc, 3.5 percent manganese, 2 percent nickel, the balance copper. Brass.
Second, and this is the correction. We drew a line between the 1926 coin as real money you could weigh and this one as a collectible priced above face. That line does not hold as cleanly as we drew it. The 1926 Sesquicentennial half sold for a dollar against a fifty-cent face — a 100 percent premium, worse than the 54 percent on a bag today. And the country did not want it. The Mint struck 1,000,528 of them, sold about 140,592, and melted 859,408. Eighty-six percent of the run went back to the furnace.
So the honest version is not that something was lost between 1926 and 2026. It is that this is the same product, sold the same way, a century apart. A coin with a president on it, priced above the number stamped into it, that never went into anyone's pocket. The only thing that changed is what the buyer got for the premium: ninety percent silver then, brass now. And the last time they tried it, the market returned 859,408 of them to be melted down. That is the part worth keeping. Maximalist.
The version going around this morning says this is the first time a sitting president has appeared on a circulating U.S. coin, and that the coins are already in circulation. Both halves are wrong. The Mint's release calls these “numismatic products” — rolls and bags sold to collectors, not coins pushed out through the banks. And Calvin Coolidge was on the 1926 Sesquicentennial half dollar while he was the sitting president, struck for the country's 150th birthday. This one is struck for the 250th. A hundred years apart, the same idea.
What changed in that hundred years is what ends up in your hand. The 1926 coin was ninety percent silver. It did not need anyone's word for it; you could weigh the thing. This one is worth more than a dollar for exactly one reason, which is that the Mint has decided to stop making it. Scarcity by press release.
Read the authority line at the bottom of the release: 31 U.S.C. 5112 and a 2020 act of Congress. That is the whole difference. This coin exists in the quantity a law permits, at a price the issuer sets, under a household limit somebody can change on a Tuesday. Twenty-one million is not a policy, and there is nobody to call.
UPDATE, 11:05 AM ET. Two things came in after we published, and one of them sharpens this piece against us.
First, the Mint settles the circulation question in its own words. The product page for these rolls and bags reads: “The coins—minted at the Philadelphia Mint—have circulating finishes but have never been placed into circulation. However, they may be still used as legal tender.” That is the seller saying it plainly. The same page gives the metal: 6 percent zinc, 3.5 percent manganese, 2 percent nickel, the balance copper. Brass.
Second, and this is the correction. We drew a line between the 1926 coin as real money you could weigh and this one as a collectible priced above face. That line does not hold as cleanly as we drew it. The 1926 Sesquicentennial half sold for a dollar against a fifty-cent face — a 100 percent premium, worse than the 54 percent on a bag today. And the country did not want it. The Mint struck 1,000,528 of them, sold about 140,592, and melted 859,408. Eighty-six percent of the run went back to the furnace.
So the honest version is not that something was lost between 1926 and 2026. It is that this is the same product, sold the same way, a century apart. A coin with a president on it, priced above the number stamped into it, that never went into anyone's pocket. The only thing that changed is what the buyer got for the premium: ninety percent silver then, brass now. And the last time they tried it, the market returned 859,408 of them to be melted down. That is the part worth keeping. Maximalist.
U.S. MINT (PRIMARY) · release dated Thu Aug 27 · on sale Wed Sep 2, 12:00 PM ET · + COINWEEK on the 1926 Coolidge precedent · + U.S. MINT PRODUCT PAGE (PRIMARY) on circulation and alloy · + 1926 MINTAGE AND MELT FIGURES, Sesquicentennial coinage record