Congress created the series with the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, Public Law 109-145, signed on December 22, 2005. It was a second try at a dollar coin people would use, after the Sacagawea dollar failed to circulate, and it borrowed the idea that had made the state quarters popular: a new design every few months. Four presidents were honored each year, in the order they served, starting with George Washington on February 15, 2007 and moving to the next president about every three months.
The law set the rules for the whole run. A president had to be dead for at least two years before appearing on a coin, and no living president could appear. Each period of service got one coin, so Grover Cleveland, with two terms that did not follow each other, got two. The Sacagawea design had to keep coming too, at no less than a third of all dollars struck. The First Spouse gold coins honored each president's spouse on the same schedule.
The coins did not catch on. On December 13, 2011 the Treasury suspended minting them for circulation; according to Wikipedia, about 1.4 billion unused dollar coins were in storage by then. The Mint kept striking each new design for collectors, so from Chester Arthur in 2012 the coins were sold in rolls, bags and sets. Ronald Reagan closed the series in 2016, because every later president was still living. The law allowed the program to restart only by a new Act of Congress, and Public Law 116-112, approved January 27, 2020, did that for one coin: George H.W. Bush, released on December 4, 2020.
From 2018 the American Innovation dollars took over the golden dollar with a Statue of Liberty obverse of their own. The 2026 Donald Trump dollar is not part of this series; it was issued under the 2020 law behind the Semiquincentennial designs.
