Jefferson Nickels Return to Monticello 2006 to Date

The 2003 law behind the Westward Journey nickels also set their end date. The Mint noted that any nickel issued after December 31, 2005 had to carry Monticello on its reverse, and Jefferson stayed on the obverse.

For the new obverse the Mint picked a design by Jamie Franki of Concord, North Carolina, one of its Artistic Infusion Program artists, from 147 entries. Franki, who had also designed the 2005 bison, worked from Rembrandt Peale's portrait of Jefferson painted in 1800, the year he was elected. Donna Weaver sculpted it, and the word Liberty is again in Jefferson's handwriting. At the launch on January 12, 2006, Mint officials poured the first coins from a silver goblet Jefferson had designed. The Mint called it the nation's first circulating coin to show a president facing forward; earlier presidential coins used profiles.

The reverse brought back Felix Schlag's 1938 Monticello. The Mint said small technical changes had crept in over more than 65 years, so sculptor-engraver John Mercanti restored it from Schlag's original work: the facets of the dome came back, the balconies were reworked and the door and windows regained their relief. With Schlag's portrait retired, his FS initials moved to the reverse.

From 2005 through 2010 the nickels in the Mint's uncirculated sets had a satin finish. Production dropped sharply in 2009: Wikipedia, citing Mint figures, gives 86,640,000 struck for circulation, a fall it ties to weak demand for coins, before a rebound to 490,560,000 in 2010. In 2020 the West Point Mint struck its first nickels, for collector sets only. The 2026 nickel keeps these designs with the dual date 1776~2026 and is covered on the 2026 Semiquincentennial nickel page.

The obverse shows Jefferson facing the viewer, with IN GOD WE TRUST, a script Liberty and the date. The reverse has E PLURIBUS UNUM, Monticello with MONTICELLO beneath it, FIVE CENTS and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Look for FS to the right of the building: it marks every reverse from 2006 on and no earlier one. A left-facing Jefferson means a coin of 1938-2004, and a right-facing one means 2005; see the Westward Journey nickels.

Mint mark: on the obverse, just below the date.

Satin or business strike. Satin coins came only in the 2006-2010 uncirculated sets, and NGC lists them as SMS. NGC also records Five Full Steps and Six Full Steps grades on both satin and business strikes.

• 2006: the first year of Franki's portrait and the restored Monticello, with satin finish coins in the Mint sets. NGC gives 847,361 satin coins from each mint.
• 2009: Philadelphia struck 39,840,000 and Denver 46,800,000, NGC's figures.
• 2010 satin finish: the last year of satin Mint set nickels, 583,897 from each mint according to NGC.
• 2017-S Enhanced Uncirculated: struck at San Francisco for the Mint's 225th Anniversary Enhanced Uncirculated Coin Set, released August 1, 2017. The Mint described laser-frosted areas on an unpolished field, and the set was capped at 225,000.
• 2018-S Reverse Proof: from the 2018 Silver Reverse Proof Set, issued for 50 years of regular proof coinage at San Francisco. USA Coin Book gives 199,116.
• 2020-W Proof and 2020-W Reverse Proof: the only West Point nickels, added to the proof set and the silver proof set. USA Coin Book gives 464,730 and 313,183.
• 2024: 112,800,000 struck for circulation, 79,920,000 at Philadelphia and 32,880,000 at Denver (Wikipedia citing the Mint; USA Coin Book).
• Hub-level doubling, 2022-2025. Most doubled dies of this design in the Wexler file are tilted hub doubling around the center door. A few recent listings trace the doubling to the hub rather than a single die, so many dies share it. VarietyVista calls its 2022-P VDDR-001 a doubled working hub found on dies from 2022 through 2025. The Wexler file lists a 2023 doubled master die with spread at the lower left corner of the right arch, and a 2025-P working hub reverse doubled on the bottoms of both arches. Die markers differ from coin to coin on these.

The Mint gives one metal specification for the design and no silver version. In the 2018 Silver Reverse Proof Set, for example, CoinNews lists only the dime, quarters and half dollar as 90% silver.