2009-P Zachary Taylor

Philadelphia struck 41,580,000 Zachary Taylor dollars in 2009, several million ahead of the Denver mintage of 36,680,000 and the fourth and final design of the year after Polk, Tyler, and William Henry Harrison. Taylor entered general circulation on November 19, 2009. The launch closed out a year in which Presidential Dollar mintages had stepped down sharply from 2008 levels at both mints, the result of unreleased program inventory accumulating in Federal Reserve vaults rather than any decline in Mint production capacity. Susan Gamble designed the obverse portrait, Don Everhart sculpted the working dies, and Everhart's Statue of Liberty reverse, common to every business-strike Presidential Dollar through 2016, completes the coin. The "P" mintmark, the date, and the edge mottoes were applied in a separate third strike after the faces were impressed.

Cherry-pickers approach a 2009-P Taylor with three things in mind. The first is the roller-mark and bag-mark cluster that recurs across the entire Philadelphia Presidential Dollar run, which separates an MS65 from an MS66 more often than strike weakness does. The second is missing-edge-lettering errors, where a finished planchet skipped the edge press and was bagged anyway; these exist on the Taylor issue but are far scarcer than on the 2007 Washington dollar that triggered the original "Godless dollar" coverage. Authentication should come through PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, or NGC, the Numismatic Guaranty Company, since plain-edge fakes circulate with the genuine errors. The third is doubled edge lettering, where the third strike imparted the legend twice; this trades as a minor variety rather than a premium error.

For the date-and-mintmark collector, the 2009-P Taylor is common through MS66 and inexpensive in any circulated grade, with the practical interest sitting at MS67 and above where population reports thin sharply. The realistic acquisition path is an original Mint-wrapped roll for a few dollars over face value or a two-coin Philadelphia and Denver year set. For program-wide context including the four-presidents-per-year format and the 2012 transition to collector-only distribution, see the Presidential Dollar series history.