2009-P John Tyler

Philadelphia matched Denver almost exactly in 2009, striking 43,540,000 John Tyler dollars and continuing the close production parity the United States Mint maintained between the two facilities through the program's circulation years. The coin entered general distribution on May 21, 2009, the second of four 2009 designs after James Polk and ahead of William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor. Don Everhart designed both faces of the issue: the obverse portrait of Tyler captures the long features and angular profile shown in mid-1840s portraiture, and the Statue of Liberty reverse appears on every business-strike Presidential Dollar in the series. As with all Philadelphia Presidential Dollars, the mintmark and date are incused on the edge rather than the obverse, applied in a third strike after the design dies pressed the faces.

Two specific concerns matter on this issue. Plain-edge errors, where a planchet skipped the edge-lettering press, surface on 2009-dated dollars at lower frequency than on the original 2007 Washington but still exist; certified examples through PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, or NGC, the Numismatic Guaranty Company, command three- and four-figure premiums depending on grade. The second is strike quality. Tyler's high forehead and the hair across his temple are the first details to lose definition, so MS66 examples with full crispness in those zones are scarcer than the bulk population reports might suggest. Edge-lettering doubling also exists and trades modestly above face. Buyers chasing top grades should examine the central obverse under angled light before paying a premium.

The Philadelphia Tyler is a common date collected mostly as part of a date-and-mintmark set or a complete forty-coin Presidential Dollar run. Original Mint-wrapped rolls and bags remain the most efficient route to a high-grade example: the cost is modest above face value and the yield of MS66 coins from a pristine roll is good. Slabbed MS67 examples are inexpensive enough that buying one outright often beats searching ten rolls hoping to upgrade. For deeper background on how the program was structured and why circulation was suspended in late 2011, see the Presidential Dollar series history.