2013-P William Howard Taft, NIFC

Philadelphia struck 4,760,000 William Howard Taft dollars in 2013, the third of the four 2013 designs (McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson) and released July 9, 2013. The figure matches the 2013-P McKinley mintage that opened the year and pairs with a Denver run of 3,920,000 for a combined Taft total of 8.68 million, a typical mid-NIFC scale. Don Everhart designed and sculpted the obverse Taft portrait and the Statue of Liberty reverse, with the legend WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, 27TH PRESIDENT, 1909-1913. Taft is the only person to serve as both U.S. President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the chief justiceship he took up in 1921 under Warren Harding lasted into early 1930. The P mintmark sits on the edge rather than the obverse, a Presidential-series convention; roughly half of any random handful will read right-side up relative to the obverse and half upside down, which is normal and not a variety.

Strike on the Philadelphia Taft is generally crisp through the central portrait, with the high points of the hair and the lapel and tie of Taft's coat the first areas to soften under die wear. The reverse torch flame is the common weak spot collectors flag. Plain-edge errors, where a finished planchet bypassed the third-strike edge-lettering press, surface on 2013 NIFC dollars at far lower rates than on the 2007 Washington issues that triggered the original missing-edge-lettering coverage; when authenticated by PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, or NGC, the Numismatic Guaranty Company, they command three- and four-figure premiums. Manganese-brass tones aggressively, and bright lemon-yellow surfaces on a 2013 coin almost always indicate cleaning rather than original mint state.

The 2013-P Taft sold only through Mint products: 25-coin rolls, 250-coin boxes, the annual Mint Set, and various year-set assemblies. Original Mint-wrapped rolls remain available at modest premiums and are the efficient cherry-picking path for upper-end examples. Certified MS66 and MS67 coins trade for small premiums; MS68 is the legitimate condition-rarity tier, with the MS69 population effectively a registry-set ceiling. With distribution restricted to collectors, original-state survival is effectively the entire mintage. For broader background on the December 2011 NIFC cutover, see the Presidential Dollar series history.