2024-P Maine

Philadelphia struck 1,120,000 examples of the 2024 Maine American Innovation Dollar, matching the Denver issue exactly and arriving on the same May 16, 2024 release date when the U.S. Mint opened sales for the design's rolls and bags. Maine, the twenty-third state in the Union (admitted March 15, 1820 after separating from Massachusetts under the Missouri Compromise), is honored on the reverse for Dr. Bernard Lown's invention of the direct current defibrillator in 1962. Phebe Hemphill, the same Mint medallic artist who sculpted the standard Statue of Liberty obverse for the Innovation series after Justin Kunz's design, both designed and sculpted the Lown reverse. The composition pairs a profile portrait of Lown with the cardioverter device shown actively delivering a synchronized DC discharge, the pulse he termed "cardioversion." Inscriptions read UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, BERNARD LOWN, M.D., DIRECT CURRENT DEFIBRILLATOR, and MAINE.

The Philadelphia issue distributes the way every modern Innovation Dollar does: through 25-coin rolls and 100-coin bags from the Mint catalog, with no general circulation release in the conventional sense. Surviving population sits almost entirely in collector hands at MS65 and above. Strike characteristics on the Philadelphia issue follow the standard manganese-brass pattern: the satin obverse Liberty reads cleanly, while the reverse's Lown portrait and the defibrillator paddles below are the date-specific detail to inspect. Examples that show full separation between the device's paddles and the connecting cable, rather than a mushy bridge between the two elements, are worth holding out for; the difference is visible even in standard MS66 examples and reads as a genuine strike-quality marker rather than a die-state artifact.

For set-builders, the 2024-P Maine sits in the middle mintage band of the program, above the 2023 issues but consistent with the gradual annual taper from the early 2019 highs. The badge remains Regular: original Mint rolls remain widely available, and the 1.12 million mintage is more than sufficient to supply collector demand without registry-tier scarcity outside MS68 and above. For broader program context, see the American Innovation Dollar series history.