2001-D

Denver struck 70,939,500 Sacagawea dollars in 2001, the program's second year and the moment the launch hype collapsed into ordinary production. The 2000-D had run to 518,916,000 pieces; the 2001-D came in at roughly fourteen percent of that figure. The drop tells the real story of the dollar coin in circulation: vending operators, transit agencies, and post office stamp machines absorbed some of the new pieces, but cash-register drawers across the country kept a paper bill where the golden dollar should have gone, and the Mint pulled production back accordingly. The coin still uses the 2000-2008 reverse, Thomas D. Rogers Sr.'s soaring eagle, paired with Glenna Goodacre's portrait of Sacagawea carrying her infant son Jean Baptiste.

Strike on the 2001-D is generally cleaner than the heavily produced 2000-D, where late-die-state hair detail on Sacagawea and feather definition on the eagle frequently disappoint. With smaller deliveries, Denver was working fresher dies more of the time, and Mint State examples from original Mint sets and bank-wrapped rolls usually show full obverse hair and crisp eagle plumage. The manganese-brass alloy bag-marks easily, so the most common condition issue is contact rather than weak strike. Watch for the planchet streaking and pale matte zones that come from inconsistent burnishing of the brass clad surface; these are not damage but they affect grade. The smooth edge is correct for 2001; edge lettering on Native American dollars did not arrive until 2009.

For collectors, the 2001-D is a common date and a Regular classification piece; raw rolls and ungraded singles remain inexpensive, and sending one to a grading service rarely makes economic sense below MS67. The condition target is MS67 with strong luster, where populations are healthy enough to keep prices modest but high enough that picking carefully matters. Year-set and type-set buyers find this date trivial to acquire; the Sacagawea specialist treats the 2001-D as a routine box-checking issue rather than a hunt. For background on the program's launch, the design competition, and the 2009 transition to annually rotating Native American reverses, see the Sacagawea Dollar series history.