2019 American Innovation Dollar
Coins featuring Annie Jump Cannon
If this coin series is unfamiliar to you, it’s probably because no dollar coins have been issued for circulation since 2011. These coins are issued for numismatic sales only. Which is a shame. One of the best ways to increase numismatic interest is to make it easy, inexpensive, and exciting to search for coins. Placing them in circulation would do that. This was the motivation for the mint to release West Point-minted quarters in 2019 and 2020. Snatching coins out of circulation is a great and inexpensive way to enter the hobby. One of my favorite coins as a kid was the 1976 Bicentennial Quarter. Why? Because it was different from every other quarter. It felt special like I’d just discovered treasure. I kept every single one I found. I still do.
The American Innovation Dollar Series
The American Innovation Coin Program was designed to honor innovation, and innovators, by issuing $1 coins for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the five U. S. territories. Released in the same order as the State Quarters series, Delaware was the first state featured in the series that will run until 2032.
The common obverse of the coins features a dramatic representation of the Statue of Liberty and the inscriptions “$1,” and “IN GOD WE TRUST.” The initials JK and PH are for designer Justin Kunz and engraver Phebe Hemphill, the sculptor of the Bombay Hook quarter. Ms. Hemphill, like William Cousins, once worked as a sculptor at the Franklin Mint. The obverse also features a privy mark representing gears & cogs, a nod to American Industry. The privy mark has been different every year.
The coins have a lettered edge, a feature of dollar coins since the introduction of the Presidential Dollar Series in 2007. The edge displays the year of minting, the mint mark, and “E PLURIBUS UNUM.” Some collectors have complained about this design choice. Why? In an album, the dates cannot be seen. Personally, I’m a fan of the lettered edge and love it on every coin where it’s used. Though I’ve found no evidence to support this theory, I suspect that the privy mark was a way to address the complaints about the edge lettering.
The coins feature the same golden manganese brass composition introduced with the Sacagawea dollar in 2000.
The origins of the $ symbol aren’t well documented. My favorite theory is that before the United States was its own country, settlers sometimes used imported coins. The most common and popular were Spanish coins minted from Mexican and Bolivian silver, known as peso de ocho reales (“pieces of eight reales” in English, commonly just “pieces of eight”). Some have speculated that the $ symbol arose as a stylistic variation on the number 8.
The word dollar is a version of the German word thaler, itself a shortened version of the word Joachimthaler. Thaler originally referred to the silver coins minted from silver mines in a town called Joachimsthal. Since its origin, the word dollar was then used to represent silver coins in many currencies, including the Spanish silver eight-real coins. As I mentioned above, British pounds were rare in the colonies, but there were plenty of Spanish silver coins. The US adopted the dollar as its official monetary unit in 1792.
The Annie Jump Cannon Dollar
Delaware-born astronomer Annie Jump Cannon was selected to represent the state during a Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) meeting on April 16, 2019. A second recommendation was the invention of Nylon. Nylon was developed by DuPont, a Delaware chemical company, in the 1930s. I think the right choice was made both thematically and visually.
The reverse honors Annie Jump Cannon’s achievements with a silhouette of her against a field of stars. It’s bold and modern. It takes a more visual design approach instead of the more literal depictions found on many coins. It also takes advantage of the fact that it’s a non-circulating coin. The devices would wear quickly in circulation, but free of that concern the coin shines as an example of medallic art. It was designed by artist, and former Mint sculptor, Donna Weaver. It was sculpted by Chief Engraver Joseph Menna and based on a photograph of the astronomer.
During the meeting in April 2019, 17 design candidates were shown featuring the two themes. Below are six showing the wide variety of artistic interpretations. The others can be found on the Mint’s website. During that same meeting, the CCAC expressed concern about recommending a theme at the same time as potential designs. They suggested states only suggest one theme per state to give artists more time to develop concepts for future submissions.
On May 9, 1922, the International Astronomical Union passed a resolution to formally adopt Annie Jump Cannon's stellar classification system, the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures and spectral types. With minor changes, it is still being used for classifying stars today. In 1925, she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Oxford. Starting in 1934, the American Astronomical Society began awarding the “Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy” annually for outstanding research and promise for future research by a postdoctoral woman researcher.
The American Innovation dollars are available in a reverse-proof finish. A laser-frosting process uses lasers to create tiny pits in the surface to create the frosted cameo effect. This means surfaces can be frosted which would have been difficult in the past with older techniques.
Something to watch for when choosing a graded example of these coins will be the designation of Positions A or B. This is related to the lettered edge. The lettered edge is struck after the obverse & reverse are struck and there is no effort to ensure they are all facing the same direction. The orientation of the lettered edge doesn’t affect the value of the coin, but it could create confusion if you are selecting between multiple coins and you can’t identify the difference. This info applies to the Native American dollar series and the Presidential dollar series. The designations are:
POSITION A - Edge lettering reads upside-down when the obverse faces up
POSITION B - Edge lettering reads normally when the obverse faces up
Availability
As of March 2025, the reverse proof is still available directly from the US Mint for $13.25. Since these were never released into circulation, the uncirculated and proof examples will only be found from a dealer. But overall, these are very affordable and can be found easily. I acquired my three graded examples for less than $100 total.
Mintages and Coin information - American Innovation $1 Coin Series, Annie Jump Cannon:
2019-P Uncirculated Mintage: 472,750 (PCGS Number: 803846, Greysheet ID: 82126)*
2019-S Reverse Proof: 71,668** (PCGS: 807144, GSID: 82155)
Weight 8.1 grams; composition, pure copper core with outer layer of manganese brass (.770 copper, .120 zinc, and .040 nickel); diameter 26.5 mm; lettered edge with the mintmark, date, and the inscription E PLURIBUS UNUM
Mints - Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco
* There are multiple varieties recognized for these coins. Specifically, the orientation of the edge lettering. I referenced the A position in the information.
** As of March 24, 2025. Max mintage set at 75,000. Up-to-date US Mint sales figures can be found here.
