2016 is the 10th and final year for the Presidential dollar program. The presidents to be honored are Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Since 2016 is the final year for the program, not only will it be interesting to see what packaging options or coin finishes the Mint will include for the program’s swan song, but also what lies ahead for a possible successor program.

Full video transcript:

This is the Monday Morning Brief. I’m Coin World Senior Editor Paul Gilkes.

2016 is the last year for Presidential $1 coins to be produced. The presidents to be honored are Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan. Until 2015 it had been believed that Reagan would be skipped because of an interpretation of the authorizing Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005. The Mint reversed its plans not to issue a Reagan Presidential dollar and subsequent Nancy Reagan First Spouse $10 gold coin after Rep. William P. Huizenga, a Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade, intervened.

Individual portraits of the Reagan have both been recommended by the Commission of Fine Arts and the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee for the obverses. The proposed reverse favored by Mrs. Reagan harkens to her “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign of the 1980s. Approved designs for the obverse of the Ronald Reagan Presidential dollar and the Nancy Reagan First Spouse gold coin are not going to be disclosed to the public by the U.S. Mint until Feb. 6, 2016, on what would have been President Reagan’s 105th birthday. Mrs. Reagan’s portrait on the gold coin’s obverse and likely a second likeness for the reverse reflects the first time for a living person to appear on a U.S. coin since Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s portrait was rendered on the obverse of the 1995 Special Olympics silver dollar.

The obverse portraits that will appear on the 2016 Presidential dollars honoring Nixon and Ford were announced late Dec. 4 by the Mint. All three Presidential obverse designs for 2016 will be paired with U.S. Mint sculptor/engraver Donald Everhart II’s common reverse of the Statue of Liberty introduced in the Presidential dollar coin series in 2007. Since 2016 is the final year for the program, not only will it be interesting to see what packaging options or coin finishes the Mint will include for the program’s swan song, but also what lies ahead for a possible successor program.

For Coin World, I’m Senior Editor Paul Gilkes.