2008-D Andrew Jackson

The 2008-D Andrew Jackson dollar was the third release in the 2008 Presidential Dollar lineup, following James Monroe and John Quincy Adams and preceding Martin Van Buren. Denver struck 61,070,000 pieces, a sharp step down from the 88-million-plus Denver mintages that opened the program in 2007. Federal Reserve banks were already sitting on unreleased pallets of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison dollars by the spring of 2008, and the Mint cut Denver's planned production accordingly. Joel Iskowitz drew the obverse portrait of Jackson and Jim Licaretz sculpted the dies; Don Everhart's Statue of Liberty reverse, common to every business-strike Presidential Dollar, appears here as well. The "D" mintmark sits on the edge alongside the date and the mottoes, applied as a third strike after the obverse and reverse were stamped.

Jackson dollars carry the same pair of production headaches that plagued the entire 2007 to 2008 stretch. The first is missing-edge-lettering errors, where a finished blank skipped the edge press; these are far less common on 2008 dates than on the 2007 Washington dollar but still exist and trade at meaningful premiums when authenticated. The second is weak strikes on Jackson's high-relief cheekbone and forehead, a frequent cause of a coin grading MS65 rather than MS66. Collectors looking for top-pop examples should examine the central obverse under angled light. Doubled-edge-lettering pieces, where the edge press struck twice, also surface occasionally and are catalogued as minor varieties rather than premium errors.

For the date and mintmark collector, the 2008-D Jackson is a common coin in any circulated grade and inexpensive through MS66. The condition rarity sits at MS67 and above, where strike quality and bag marks thin the surviving population sharply. Most buyers acquire this issue through original Mint-wrapped rolls or two-coin P and D sets rather than slabbed singles, and a clean MS66 pulled from an unsearched roll is a realistic goal at modest cost. For the broader program context, see the Presidential Dollar series history.