2011-D Ulysses S. Grant

Denver struck 37,940,000 Ulysses S. Grant dollars in 2011, the largest Denver figure of any 2011 Presidential Dollar and the standout total across that year's four designs (Andrew Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield). The Grant issue launched on May 19, 2011, second of four 2011 releases, and rode a wave of demand that the other three 2011 honorees did not match: Grant carried a recognizability ceiling those names could not reach, and Federal Reserve orders responded. Don Everhart sculpted both the obverse Grant portrait and the Statue of Liberty reverse used on every business-strike Presidential Dollar in the program. The 2011 Denver mintage line as a whole is meaningful in series terms because 2011 was the final calendar year these coins entered general circulation; effective December 13, 2011, the United States Mint suspended Federal Reserve releases of Presidential Dollars in response to a billion-coin surplus already sitting in vaults.

Plain-edge errors, where a finished planchet bypassed the third-strike edge-lettering press, surface on 2011 Denver dollars at lower rates than on the famous 2007 Washington "Godless dollar" run but still appear and command three- and four-figure premiums when authenticated by PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, or NGC, the Numismatic Guaranty Company. Doubled edge lettering also appears, as do weak-strike examples where Grant's beard and the higher-relief portions of the obverse lose definition. MS66 and MS67 examples with full sharpness on those high points are scarcer than the population reports suggest, because most graded coins came from original Mint-wrapped rolls and bags where bag-handling marks dominate. A reader new to the hobby should look at Grant's beard and hair detail first; that is where the strike judgment for this date lives.

The Denver Grant is a common date acquired most efficiently in original Mint-wrapped rolls and bags, where high-grade examples can be cherry-picked at small premiums over face value. Slabbed MS67 coins remain inexpensive enough that buying one outright often costs less than searching multiple rolls. For the program's wider context, including the December 2011 transition to collector-only distribution that ended the circulation run with this very year's four designs, see the Presidential Dollar series history.