2011-P James A. Garfield

Philadelphia struck 37,100,000 James A. Garfield dollars in 2011, an exact match to the Denver figure for the same design and roughly three-quarters of the 2010 Lincoln Philadelphia total. The number reflects the dynamic that defined the program's last circulating year: the Federal Reserve was sitting on a multi-year backlog of unissued Presidential Dollars, and the United States Mint had cut production accordingly. The Garfield issue entered general distribution on November 17, 2011 as the fourth and final 2011 Presidential Dollar release. Less than four weeks later, on December 13, 2011, the Treasury announced that no further Presidential Dollars would be released into circulation; 2012 onward issues would be struck only for collector products. The 2011-P Garfield is therefore one of the last Philadelphia Presidential Dollars Americans could pull from a bank roll. Phebe Hemphill sculpted the obverse portrait; Don Everhart's Statue of Liberty reverse appears on the reverse, as it does on every business-strike Presidential Dollar.

The 2011 issues bear a P mintmark incused on the edge alongside the date and the legends IN GOD WE TRUST and E PLURIBUS UNUM, applied in a third strike after the obverse and reverse dies pressed the faces. Plain-edge errors, where a planchet skips that third strike, surface on 2011 dollars and command three- and four-figure premiums when authenticated by PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, or NGC, the Numismatic Guaranty Company. Garfield's hair and beard show softness on weakly-struck examples; a sharp MS66 or MS67 with full hair detail is harder to find than the raw mintage figure suggests. A new collector should look at the portrait's high points first.

The 2011-P Garfield is a common date acquired most efficiently in original Mint-wrapped rolls or in 2011 Mint Sets, both still on the market at modest premiums. Slabbed MS67 examples trade for small figures and are often the cheaper route than searching rolls. The 2011 Philadelphia coins carry a structural distinction the later NIFC issues do not: they were actually distributed to circulation. For program-wide context, including why the December 2011 NIFC transition happened when it did, see the Presidential Dollar series history.