2019 American Innovation $1 Coin

The American Innovation $1 Coin program honors the innovators who have made what America is all about. The program started this year and will run till 2033. Every year the U.S. mint will release 4 coins. The coins will represent each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the five U. S. territories – Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. These will depict the ‘Statue of Liberty’ design on the obverse and a new reverse design for each coin every year to honor an innovation from each state/territory.

There was an introductory coin for the program released last year in December. Unprecedented in American numismatics, however, is that the U.S. Mint re-released the inaugural coin design from 2018 in August of 2019 in a reverse-proof finish. Despite being released in 2019, it was still struck with the 2018 date on the edge lettering of the coin. Unheard of in United States coinage! Being such a unique situation and with a mintage of only 75,000, this was obviously a very quick sellout on the U.S. Mint’s website.

Not only was this introductory coin an anomaly, but it was also released very late in the year. Many of us didn’t even see the state designs until August. This leaves all 4 initial coin designs of the program – Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Georgia – to be released in the last 4 months of the year! Given this tight deadline we may even end up with one or more of these 2019 designs being released in 2020 but time will tell.

Anne Jump Cannon – Astronomer

Delaware is the first of four coins to be released this year. It features Anne Jump Cannon, a Delaware-born internationally recognized astronomer who invented a system for classifying the stars still in use today. Being deaf didn’t stop her from being one of the foremost names in astronomy in that century.

Anne Jump Cannon was born in the latter part of the 19th century when many American women achieved their firsts in various professions; medicine, dentistry, engineering, astronomy, and more. Her mother was unique in the way she supported her daughter’s education. Anne studied Mathematics in Wilmington Conference Academy and later Physics and Astronomy at Wellesley college. She pursued her love for astronomy even though she became deaf in her early adult years.

Cannon became a part of the ‘Pickering’s women’ group set up to classify stars and update in the ‘Henry Draper Catalogue’. They were given the task of identifying stars based on their optical spectra. She was exceptionally fast in identifying stars; 3 stars a minute just by looking at their spectral patterns. She classified more than 350,000 stars in her lifetime. Cannon also wrote books and articles to increase astronomy's status. In 1933, she represented professional women at the World's Fair in Chicago. Anne Cannon’s stellar classification system is still being used with a few minor changes.

2019 American Innovation $1 coin design

The 2019 American Innovation $1 coin honors Cannon’s achievements and contributions to the world. The reverse design features a silhouette of Anne Jump Cannon against the night sky, with several stars visible. Inscriptions are “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” “ANNE JUMP CANNON,” “CLASSIFYING THE STARS,” and “DELAWARE.”

The 2019 coin has the ‘Statue of Liberty’ design in its obverse that is common to all the coins that would be released in the coming years.

Other American Innovation coin designs for this year

The 2nd coin is from Pennsylvania and the design depicts an artist’s conception of the polio virus at three different levels of magnification along with the silhouette of a period microscope. The 3rd is from New Jersey and the design honors the development of a lightbulb with a filament that could last 1,200 hours. The last coin for the year is from Georgia and the coin’s design depicts a hand planting seeds in the inscription TRUSTEES’ GARDEN, from which grows a variety of species representing the variety of plants grown in the garden: an orange tree seedling, sassafras, grapes, white mulberry, flax, peaches, olive,” and a young shoot too small to be identified.

If you would like to get both the inaugural proof coin released in 2018 AND the inaugural reverse-proof coin released in 2019 check out the link below!