On Wednesday, the U.S. Mint began selling commemorative $1 coins with President Donald J. Trump’s portrait on them — for collectors willing to pay a pretty penny.
Sold for roughly 150% to 250% of their nominal value, the coins feature Trump’s face on the obverse or “heads” side, and the presidential seal on the reverse or “tails” side. Both sides of the coin have inscriptions that commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary this year. Despite the gold hue, there isn’t any real gold in them; they’re primarily copper with small amounts of zinc, manganese and nickel.
Although legal tender for $1, the Mint’s website sold the coins in rolls or bags of 25 for $61 or 100 for $154.50. That’s $2.44 or $1.55 per coin, respectively. That’s a relative bargain compared to the $5 price per coin at vending machines in the Mint’s Washington, D.C., store, according to The Washington Post.
Collectors didn’t seem to mind the markup, though: On Thursday, the coins were “currently unavailable” online, mere hours after going on sale, with no indication if or when they might be restocked.
Making ‘cents’ of the legal controversy
Perhaps that’s because the gold Trump $1 coin breaks with historical — if not legal — precedent. Legislation dating from the 19th century prohibits the depiction of living people — presidents included — on U.S. currency, while 2005 legislation to produce commemorative $1 presidential coins stipulated that a former president could not appear on one until at least two years after death.
A bipartisan congressional committee that oversees coin designs did not approve a gold Trump coin. “If they make it without our review, it will be illegal,” committee member Donald Scarinci (D-N.Y.) told The Washington Post in June, in response to a proposal for a 24-karat gold coin bearing Trump’s image.
The Treasury Department, however, said the coin was legal under a 2020 law regulating semiquincentennial commemorative coins. Officials argued that the Trump coin falls under the law’s permitted depiction of “designs emblematic of the United States Semiquincentennial.”
In an interview with Fox News in July, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said there was precedent for putting a sitting president on a coin. For the nation’s 150th anniversary, a commemorative half-dollar coin depicting Calvin Coolidge and George Washington was produced, although most of the 1 million minted were returned to the Mint and melted down.
The country’s 250th anniversary has been a bonanza for coin collectors, with the Mint rolling out a number of commemorative designs. These included a noncirculating, special-edition penny, notable for being produced after the Mint stopped making pennies for general circulation last year.
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