The Federal Reserve has enough inventory of $1 coins to match circulation needs for nearly 16 years, according to an estimate revealed in the agency’s 2022 annual report to Congress about Presidential dollars.
Published in December, the report indicated that the projection considered how many $1 coins were needed over the past five years. It also noted that $83 million were pulled from Reserve Bank vaults for commerce through the 12 months ending June 30, 2022. At that time, inventories of dollars fell to about 928 million. The agency has since published another two quarterly periods of inventory data, reducing the number to 888 million dollars, marking another 40 million drop through the last six months of 2022.
Reserve Bank inventories of $1 coins peaked to 1.44 billion in the third quarter of 2012. They have trended lower since that peak by several million every month.
The United States Mint produces, sells and then delivers circulating coins to Reserve Banks to support its service to commercial banks and other financial institutions. Most of the Fed’s vaulted dollars are Presidential $1 Coins. As directed by Public Law 109-145, the U.S. Mint was required to produce them in commemoration of former American presidents from 2007 to 2016. However, the public preferred paper money over clad dollars, and inventories of $1 coins resultantly soared by as much as 298 million a year. The trajectory had Fed officials talking about needing more storage space.
The build-up was eventually checked in December 2011, when the stockpile had reached 1.42 billion coins, after Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner halted $1 coin production for circulation.
Today, the U.S. Mint still produces clad $1 coins but only for collectible products offered to the public. These include one a year featuring a design honoring the important contributions made by Indian tribes and individual Native Americans and four a year depicting American innovation.
As a comparison to the most Fed ordered U.S. denomination for circulation, the U.S Mint struck over 6.3 billion Lincoln cents in 2022 alone. Ironically, it costs the Mint 2.72 cents to make and distribute each one.
This last table shows Fed $1 coin inventories, payments and receipts since 2007.
$1 Coin Quarterly Inventories, Payments, and Receipts
(Millions of pieces)
| U.S. Mint Orders | Reserve Bank Receipts from Circulation |
Reserve Bank Payments to Circulation |
Reserve Bank Inventories |
|
| 2022: Q4 | 0 | 21 | 46 | 888 |
| 2022: Q3 | 0 | 28 | 43 | 913 |
| 2022: Q2 | 0 | 23 | 52 | 928 |
| 2022: Q1 | 0 | 22 | 45 | 956 |
| 2021: Q4 | 0 | 20 | 33 | 979 |
| 2021: Q3 | 0 | 25 | 43 | 993 |
| 2021: Q2 | 0 | 20 | 47 | 1,011 |
| 2021: Q1 | 0 | 25 | 31 | 1,038 |
| 2020: Q4 | 0 | 25 | 32 | 1,044 |
| 2020: Q3 | 0 | 26 | 39 | 1,051 |
| 2020: Q2 | 0 | 15 | 29 | 1,064 |
| 2020: Q1 | 0 | 42 | 43 | 1,078 |
| 2019: Q4 | 0 | 43 | 63 | 1,079 |
| 2019: Q3 | 0 | 43 | 49 | 1,099 |
| 2019: Q2 | 0 | 41 | 50 | 1,105 |
| 2019: Q1 | 0 | 45 | 52 | 1,114 |
| 2018: Q4 | 0 | 42 | 64 | 1,121 |
| 2018: Q3 | 0 | 45 | 58 | 1,143 |
| 2018: Q2 | 0 | 44 | 53 | 1,155 |
| 2018: Q1 | 0 | 41 | 59 | 1,164 |
| 2017: Q4 | 0 | 44 | 60 | 1,183 |
| 2017: Q3 | 0 | 46 | 64 | 1,199 |
| 2017: Q2 | 0 | 42 | 66 | 1,217 |
| 2017: Q1 | 0 | 46 | 58 | 1,241 |
| 2016: Q4 | 0 | 45 | 55 | 1,254 |
| 2016: Q3 | 0 | 45 | 58 | 1,263 |
| 2016: Q2 | 0 | 40 | 52 | 1,276 |
| 2016: Q1 | 0 | 47 | 52 | 1,288 |
| 2015: Q4 | 0 | 46 | 55 | 1,293 |
| 2015: Q3 | 0 | 48 | 67 | 1,302 |
| 2015: Q2 | 0 | 44 | 58 | 1,321 |
| 2015: Q1 | 0 | 48 | 54 | 1,335 |
| 2014: Q4 | 0 | 49 | 66 | 1,341 |
| 2014: Q3 | 0 | 54 | 54 | 1,358 |
| 2014: Q2 | 0 | 50 | 70 | 1,358 |
| 2014: Q1 | 0 | 49 | 50 | 1,378 |
| 2013: Q4 | 0 | 49 | 55 | 1,379 |
| 2013: Q3 | 0 | 50 | 74 | 1,385 |
| 2013: Q2 | 0 | 53 | 66 | 1,409 |
| 2013: Q1 | 0 | 54 | 60 | 1,422 |
| 2012: Q4 | 0 | 50 | 62 | 1,428 |
| 2012: Q3 | 0 | 60 | 51 | 1,440 |
| 2012: Q2 | 0 | 58 | 60 | 1,432 |
| 2012: Q1 | 0 | 86 | 72 | 1,434 |
| 2011: Q4 | 95 | 103 | 143 | 1,420 |
| 2011: Q3 | 92 | 129 | 129 | 1,365 |
| 2011: Q2 | 88 | 101 | 124 | 1,273 |
| 2011: Q1 | 86 | 101 | 116 | 1,208 |
| 2010: Q4 | 96 | 97 | 130 | 1,137 |
| 2010: Q3 | 88 | 96 | 123 | 1,074 |
| 2010: Q2 | 72 | 92 | 105 | 1,013 |
| 2010: Q1 | 89 | 108 | 120 | 954 |
| 2009: Q4 | 77 | 123 | 110 | 878 |
| 2009: Q3 | 85 | 118 | 117 | 788 |
| 2009: Q2 | 87 | 88 | 122 | 702 |
| 2009: Q1 | 96 | 92 | 120 | 649 |
| 2008: Q4 | 104 | 88 | 138 | 580 |
| 2008: Q3 | 96 | 93 | 138 | 526 |
| 2008: Q2 | 109 | 82 | 136 | 475 |
| 2008: Q1 | 119 | 87 | 153 | 421 |
| 2007: Q4 | 144 | 85 | 153 | 368 |
| 2007: Q3 | 171 | 87 | 178 | 292 |
| 2007: Q2 | 201 | 69 | 223 | 212 |
| 2007: Q1 | 301 | 47 | 250 | 165 |
Sell all of these to China as gold dollars with a no-return/no-refund clause in the invoice.
The Chinese are much too smart to be duped by us. The Chinese use TicTok to edify their citizens with math/science programs but pump our citizens (or the young culture) with what…dance clips. And we’re going to outsmart them!
Sad but true. We are an easily distracted, idiotic lot in this country.
I can’t disagree with that, REB, but despite that we are still eons ahead of China, Russia and the Arab world, among many others, when it comes to having access to making personal choices not subject to constant governmental control.
And, yet many of our GOP/Republican politicians in Washington D.C. & at the state level are fixated on outlawing Drag Queens & Public library Drag Queen storybook reading events that don’t hurt anyone. Why don’t they focus on real problems like bank failures, healthcare reform, tax reform, banning assault guns again, & Trump-like pathological liar Congressman George Santos!?
And coinage reform to address losses producing 1-cent & 5-cents coins & getting rid of the surcharges (a “tax” by another name) on commemorative coin programs.
NumisdudeTX
Hear! Hear!
Allow me to third that, Major D and Seth Riesling!
Unfortunately, Seth, the issues you listed as being more than worthy of serious and immediate attention don’t exist for the Republicans; if anything, they see nothing wrong with any of those situations existing just as they are. To be fair, the Democrats vote just a steadily as the Republicans for bloated defense bills and projects, counter-productive unnecessary wars, world record imprisonment rates and the completely unjust laws that feed them. No one in Washington gets off with a clean record.
It is possible to be extremely intelligent and simultaneously hopelessly ignorant, Craig, and for my money that is the overall state of the Chinese mind, otherwise they wouldn’t have created and maintained a society that without so much as a time out continues to denigrate anything and everything that has to do with individual freedom.
Since you have a meme of Giorgio Tsoukalos, Happy Extraterrestrial Abductions Day! Extraterrestrial Abductions Day, March 20 Holiday. Aliens, UFOs. (holidayinsights.com)
The question I have to ask, Major D, is why does it always involve anal probes?
LOL, my GI doc must be an extraterrestrial.
Maybe they all are!
they are probably familiar with our politicians and leaders and take literally that their heads are up their democrat logo.
Interesting. The net loss in making 6.3 billion Lincoln cents in 2022 was $108.4 million (cost to make and distribute minus face value). In other words, less than one F35B or F35C fighter jet made by Lockheed Martin (@$135.8 million and $117.3 million respectively) without including the cost to operate and maintain.
… yet with state sales taxes, the damn things still circulate. I can’t even remember the last time I got a dollar coin in change and I use cash pretty much on a daily basis.
Many people, REB, have no idea what a dollar coin is and eye it with suspicion.
The common cent, on the other hand, is the subject of scorn and derision.
Dollar coins are popular in Nevada. Why? Slot machines and players accept and use them 😉
Oh boy, Major D, you really do like to live on the edge. Just because we live in a free country doesn’t mean the Military-Industrial Complex can’t have us targeted.
I’m not worried after seeing what it took to take down a balloon!
Yep. The F-35AC-DC.
U.S. Navy submarine fleet only sees targets & whales in the world’s oceans 😉
That current number of 888 million $1 coins held in Federal Reserve Bank vaults includes -Susan B. Anthony dollars from 1979, 1980, 1981 & 1999 & Sacagawea/Native American dollars & Presidential dollars. There were so many more of these dollar coins in their vaults at one point that the Federal Reserve System built a new building/vault in Texas to hold a lot of them. What a waste of good taxpayer money!
NumisdudeTX
I used to make a habit of asking for dollar coins at the bank. Only rarely would they have any rolls and they were always customer supplied. The last roll I received was in 2021 and it was all SBA’s, with some 1979 P wide rim/near date. If there are rolls in a Reserve vault, I’d sure like to get some. But I image they’ll only show up in a few hundred years in a “surprise find” auction looking pristine and commanding big bucks, just like the old Morgans did.
Since we’re having fun with Mint to Military comparisons, that stash of 888 million dollars will buy you all of 6.3% of one of the new aircraft carriers such as the Gerald Ford.
I wonder how much it will cost to build the artificial moon that the Space Force will travel in? Got to one-up the Navy!
Now you’re talking Major D, the second greatest space machine. What’s first? Star Trek’s Doomsday Machine 😉
Hold on now. Have we forgotten about Dr. Who’s one of a kind Tardis?
Before the series went overboard on PC I’d put the TARDIS up on the list, now the show is just annoying 🙁
Also no weaponry other than time changing.
I’m not sure the Space Force is going anywhere outside the earth’s atmosphere. It seems to me their assigned task is to monitor space from down here.
Time to end these useless gold-dollar coins. 25 years of Sacajawea dollars is enough. Time for something new/useful that can replace the paper dollar.
Release the rounds! Woof, woof!!
Who let the rounds out? Or was that hounds?
They are fun to hand out. Many will flip them over and over scrutinizing them not sure what they are.
just stop making the dollar bill, these will get used pretty quick.
already after inflation a dollar today is worth what a quarter could buy 40 years ago. washington is on both the $1 bill and the quarter, so it’s not like we are losing a president by discontinuing the $1 bill
totally agree, c_q. Perhaps the $2 bill would take off then.
I don’t know exactly why but I just love $2 bills, Major D. I would love to see them in wideaspread circulation whether or not the $1 bill survives the next overhaul!
R.I.P George Floyd. Sad story and I’m sorry for posting such a serious response to your lighthearted comment, however Kaiser Wilhelm, this caption and picture brought back the memory. “Floyd, aged 46, was being arrested on suspicion of attempting to pass a counterfeit bill at a neighbourhood convenience store. On May 25, 2020, a white police officer knelt on his neck for nine and half minutes, cutting off oxygen to his brain as he cried out “I can’t breathe.”” The initial police contact, came about due to a counterfeit $20. Deaths of civilians, especially the disproportionate numbers of people of… Read more »
Life is neither all sad nor all happy, Caliskier, so one emotional stance can follow the other without breaking any rules, so to speak.
Here’s an idea. How about put Lincoln on a new $1 (or 100 cent) coin and eliminate the 1 cent? Or create a new half-nickel coin in lieu of the 1 cent? (maybe having a 2.5 cent denomination would create a nationwide impetus to learn math and understand decimals…wishful thinking). Oh, and maybe it would bring back the practice from Roman days of cutting coins in half (in this case the cent) to achieve a half-cent or 0.5 denomination in order to make change for the half-nickel. I’m clearly joking here!
Honestly, Major D, who really carries cents around these days to make their purchases? Cents only travel from stores to customers now, so essentially one direction of the cent route has for all practical purposes already been shut down.
I remember 1984 like it weee yesterday. My grandfather gave all the grand kids a shiny $1 coin, as Australia moved from $1 notes to coins.
You yanks running two versions in parallel have proved you can be half pregnant.
Unless strippers start accepting deposits via their prison wallets, It’ll be notes for a while