Federal Reserve Inventories of $1 Coins at 1.105 Billion

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The United States continues to store a lot of $1 coins in vaults, according to Federal Reserve data released in September.

2019 Native American $1 Coins
The United States Mint produced golden-colored, manganese-brass dollar coins for commerce until 2011. Federal Reserve Banks now store 1.105 billion of them. Today, the U.S. Mint strikes clad dollars but only for numismatic sales. (CoinNews photo of 2019 Native American $1 Coins.)

Reserve Bank inventories of dollars were at 1.105 billion coins through the second quarter of 2019 after peaking to 1.440 billion coins in the third quarter of 2012.

They have trended lower since that peak by about 4.1 million coins per month, indicating that there are enough dollars stored away to last over two decades.

Most are Presidential $1 coins. As directed by Public Law 109-145, the United States Mint produced them in commemoration of former American presidents from 2007 to 2016.

The public preferred paper money over clad dollars, and inventories of $1 coins resultantly surged by as much as 298 million a year. The trajectory had Fed officials talking about adding storage facilities.

$1 Coin Quarterly Inventories, Payments, and Receipts
Federal Reserve Bank $1 Coin Inventories, Payments, and Receipts

The build-up was eventually checked after Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner halted $1 coin production for commerce in December 2011 when the stockpile had reached 1.42 billion coins.

Today, the United States Mint continues to strike clad $1 coins but only for collectible products that are sold to the public. These include one a year bearing a design honoring the important contributions made by Indian tribes and individual Native Americans and four a year featuring designs celebrating American innovation. In 2019, the U.S. Mint will strike about 11 million of these coins for collectors.

As a comparison to the most Fed ordered U.S. denomination for circulation, the U.S Mint produced over 3.8 billion cents in the first half of this year alone.

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TOMTHUMB

Yes just build another warehouse to store the unwanted dollars. who owns the warehouse ? who is guarding the warehouse? who is getting payed to transport them to the warehouse? some lobbyist friend ? WHAT A WASTE, but isn’t that what government is all about.

Piedmont

This is more of a continued lost opportunity.
Starting with the Susan B. Anthony coins. The US MINT, in true, form messed up what could have been a success. (Canada did it right at the first go.)
The UK tested coin shapes and sizes, without designs, in preparation for decimilisation because everyone is blind, in regards to coins in pockets. Indeed 20p and 50p is distinct by shape alone, just as is the Canadian dollar.
Dollar coins would safe vast amounts of US tax dollars, IF politicians had the b***s to withdraw dollar notes.

c_q

they don’t build additional space to store the dollars – though perhaps that’s why they stopped making them for circulation, they were likely running out of existing space.

the real waste is expecting people to use dollar coins when dollar bills are also produced. Just do one or the other.

Doug

Why do you attribute this to government? The federal reserve is a private banking system, to which the mint is beholding. They are no more part of the Federal Government than Federal Express. Thanks to Woodrow Wilson, who pined on his death bad that he had doomed the nation, signed the Federal Reserve Act after it was passed with a minimum quorum during the senate Christmas vacation. I would guess those perpetrators, now long dead, have their own demons to torment them. But their descendants are collecting the interest we pay for the money they create out thin air, from… Read more »

c_q

stop printing dollar bills and the demand for dollar coins will go up. keep printing dollar bills, and dollar coin use will never be substantial.