1999 Susan B. Anthony

Yep, the 1999 version is real. They made 29 million Ps and 11 million Ds. According to the Red Book they "were made to meet the needs of vending machines." Kinda warms your heart, doesn't it.

It was issued separately in Proof and Mint versions by the US mint.
As to why it was not included in the Proof sets I can only speculate that it was produced to late in the year to be included in the annual sets.

The SBA is one of my favorite coins based on the 20 year gap in mintages. This information is based on my memory of something I read somewhere, written by someone, at sometime in the past. So anyone please feel free to comment, critisize, or correct my info.

The mint made a slew of these in 1979 (hundreds of millions). They took off like wild fire and filled up the vaults. In 1980 they realized that there were probably enough to last a few decades. Just for good measure they cranked out 90 million more. Whew! Now all of the vaults are full of coins that don't circulate! Good Deal. 1981 they decide to appease the collectors and make enough for the mint sets, but that's it.

So there the coins sit. For twenty stinkin' years. In the vaults. Doing nothin'. Then, in the late 90's someone in the government has a great idea: We are the governement. Not only are we in charge of these hundreds of millions of dollars that noone is using - but we are also in charge of all of these new fangled postage stamp machines that everybody is using. By God - we can make those postage buying folks use the coins! We'll give them as change! So they did. When you buy stamps and need change - you get SBA dollars! It worked. They started using them. Now, they were circulating.

It worked well enough that they used up what they had. They actually used so many that they ran out. When it came time to make more dollar coins, the governemnt decided to make a new coin - the Sac. Fortunatly (for collectors of lame dollar coins) by the time they hit 1999 they were plum out of SBA's and the Sacs weren't going to be ready until 2000. The only thing they could do was make some more SBAs.

So the Sacs are heading down the same path as SBAs. Nobody uses them. Then they come up with the Presidential dollar act. This bill promises to pump even more non-ciruclating dollars into the economy. They're making hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition to all of the non-circulating pres dollars, 1/3 of all dollars minted are supposed to be Sacagaweas. Technically the mint is supposed to be making 1 Sacagawea for every two Presidential dollars. That's not happening. They need to pump out a few hundred million Sacs by the end of the year to comply with that.

Now, here's something thats ironic about the whole thing: The only reason we have pres dollars is because they thought it would interest people and they would circulate more than the Sacs. The only reason we have Sacs is because we ran out of SBAs. The reason we ran out of SBAs is because the governemnt started dispensing them as change from stamp machines. How ironic is this: Guess what the government is getting rid of and will have completly phased out by 2010? - The Stamp Machines!

I don't get it.

BTW - I've got a 1999 SBA proof. Its a single coin. I think I've seen them on ebay for less than $10, but I'm not sure. I like it because its got such a unique story.

I think its funny that the third year of all three fiat dollar coins were not released for circulation - 1973, 1981, 2002.

I also think its funny that the US mint is making all of these dollar coins, but they have no control over whether or not they circulate. The BEP has the control over whether or not the dollar coins circulate. Thats funny.

This how the unc set looked it that help?
I didnt get the proof coin.
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quote:

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Halfabustisbetter: Bottom line: you won't get the coins circulated until you get rid of the bills.

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Get rid of the ones and two dollar bills and make $1 & $2 coins. That will cut down the weight in the pocket.

I remember when they were released for circulation, approximately August or September of that year, yes, they were too late for inclusion in the proof set with the other SF minted coins, but the mint relented and did issue separate proofs. They are interesting because they are sort of like the 1921 Morgan dollar in that they were issued long after the previous issue, but unlike the 1921 Morgan dollar they were issued in rather miniscule numbers.

This may be urban legend, but may have basis in fact, supposedly they were minted because a toll road in Chicagoland ran out of SBA's and they were being used to pay fares in lieu of tokens or dollar coins. You would think they would just have banks send in the millions they still have lying around in vaults. But that is the efficiency of the government, you know, stamp these things out by the billions but not eliminate the dollar bill and wonder why they aren't used.

Most of the tales told here have pieces of the truth.

After they stopped making the coins for circulation in 1981 they still had hundreds of millions of them in storage. Now while the SBA didn't circulate widely there were a few places that did have a demand for them, most notably mass transit systems in some of the larger cities. Because of this there was a fairly steady drawdown of about 5 million coins per month from the stockpile.

In 1999 they decided to produce what became the Sac dollar. Legislation was passed authorizing the coin beginning in Jan 2000. The problem was the drawdown of the dollar stockpile was increasing and it looked like they might have to produce some more SBA's if they ran out before the Sac dollars came out. They did not want to do that so they waited until it was clear that the stockpile would not last and then began striking the 1999 SBAs, This did not occur until Sept of 1999. By that time the proof sets for the year were already on sale and being delivered so there was no way they could put the proof SBA into them. In November they produced 750,000 1999 P proof dollars and sold them for $8 as a single coin. They did have a sellout of the proof SBA, but it took four years. They stopped taking orders for them in 2003.