Presidential Dollar Products No Longer Available

Sales recently ended for a few of the US Mint's Presidential Dollar products. This includes last year's annual Proof Set and the bags and rolls for the James Monroe Dollars.

The 2009 Presidential Dollar Proof Set is no longer available. This set first went on sale February 10, 2009 priced at $14.95 each. The set contains the four different Presidential Dollars for that year featuring William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor.

The set has sold 627,925 units as of the last available weekly sales report. This is lower than the final reported sales for the 2008 set, which came in at 860,172.

I had actually expected sales of this set to end on February 11, 2010 when sales of the 2010 Presidential Dollar Proof Set began. Recently, it had been the US Mint's practice to end sales for the previous year's annual set offerings once the current year version went on sale. Does this signify that the practice will no loner be used?

Another group of products which recently moved to "sold out" status are the 2008 James Monroe Dollar 25-coin rolls and 250-coin bags from the Philadelphia or Denver Mints. These products went on sale way back on February 14, 2008 as the fifth release of the Presidential Dollar series.

The last reported sales for these products were 50,652 of the 25-coin (P) rolls, 49,399 of the 25-coin (D) rolls, 1,053 of the 250-coin (P) bags, and 565 of the 250-coin (D) bags.

An interesting aside related to the James Monroe Dollars- shortly before the circulation release and start of bags and rolls sales, tens of thousands of the dollar coins had been struck on copper-nickel clad planchets intended for quarters were discovered. The errors were found during the coin wrapping process by a private contractor of the US Mint. According to US Mint statements, all of the errors were collected and returned to the US Mint. To date, there have been no reports of any of the Monroe Dollars struck on quarter planchets ever surfacing.