Susan B. Anthony Coin Legacy

The Coin Nobody Loved at First

The Susan B. Anthony dollar has a weird place in American numismatic history. It was supposed to be practical—a smaller, lighter dollar coin for vending machines. What it became was a collector’s curiosity and a cautionary tale about design decisions.

I remember my grandmother complaining about these when I was a kid. She kept giving them to cashiers thinking they were quarters. Everyone did. The Mint somehow overlooked the obvious problem: make a coin the same size and color as a quarter, and people will confuse them with quarters.

Why It Mattered Anyway

Here’s what gets overlooked in the complaints about size: Susan B. Anthony was the first actual woman—not an allegorical figure, an actual historical person—on American circulating currency. Lady Liberty and Native American maidens had appeared before, but they were symbols. Anthony was real, documented, and controversial in her own time.

She spent fifty years fighting for women’s suffrage. Never saw the 19th Amendment pass—died fourteen years before women got the vote. Putting her on a dollar coin was a statement, even if the execution had problems.

The Specs That Caused Trouble

The coin measures 26.5 mm in diameter—barely larger than a quarter’s 24.3 mm. Same copper-nickel clad composition. Same silver color. The only distinguishing feature is the 11-sided inner border, which you can’t feel in your pocket.

Frank Gasparro designed the obverse with Anthony’s profile facing right. The reverse shows an eagle landing on the moon—borrowed from the Apollo 11 mission insignia. Space age optimism meeting suffragette history.

Production and Collectibility

Minted 1979-1981, then briefly in 1999 to fill vending machine demand while the Sacagawea dollar got designed. The 1979 production included three different mint marks, with the Philadelphia version missing its P mint mark on some specimens. Those “no P” coins now sell for $800 or more in decent condition.

Proof versions and uncirculated rolls have collector markets. Nothing like key-date silver dollars, but active enough that pricing references exist and auctions see regular activity.

The Legacy That Lasted

The Susan B. Anthony dollar opened a door that stayed open. Sacagawea came next, then presidential dollars, and Harriet Tubman is on deck for the twenty-dollar bill. The idea that real women belong on American money—that started with this awkward little coin.

Collectors now view the SBA dollar with more affection than the public ever showed during circulation. It’s a piece of history, a design failure that still represented progress. The size problem was real, but so was the symbolism.