2025-P Mary Kawena Pukui, NIFC

Philadelphia's 2025 Mary Kawena Pukui dollar honors the Native Hawaiian linguist whose work made the modern Hawaiian-language revitalization possible. The Native American $1 Coin Act of 2007 includes Native Hawaiians alongside American Indians and Alaska Natives in the program's eligibility, and Pukui's appearance is the program's first use of that authority. Pukui (1895-1986) was a scholar, composer, and hula expert who co-authored the Hawaiian Dictionary (1957) and Place Names of Hawaii (1974) with Samuel H. Elbert and spent decades at the Bishop Museum recording chants, genealogies, and oral traditions. The reverse, designed by Artistic Infusion Program artist Christina Hess and sculpted by Mint Medallic Artist Phebe Hemphill, shows Pukui wearing a hibiscus, a kukui-nut lei, and an aloha-print mu'umu'u, with stylized water in the background. The Hawaiian inscription Nānā I Ke Kumu, "look to the source," is the title of the reference series she produced with the Queen Lili'uokalani Children's Center.

What collectors look for on the 2025-P is a function of how the coin was distributed, not of mintage alone. Like every Native American Dollar struck since 2012, the Pukui issue is NIFC, Not Intended For Circulation, and ships only through Mint bags, rolls, and Mint Sets; that distribution explains why certified examples cluster in MS66 and MS67 rather than spreading across grades. Strike sharpness on the lei beads and on the woven pattern of the mu'umu'u is the practical condition test at the top of the grade scale; the open water field behind the portrait takes contact marks easily inside sealed packaging, so an MS68 candidate needs a clean right field.

Inside the program's landscape today, the 2025-P is a common-date NIFC entry whose draw is the design and the first Native Hawaiian honoree rather than any population scarcity. Registry-set builders working the Native American series need the date; original Mint-wrapped rolls trade at modest premiums over face, and certified MS67 examples sit in the low double digits. The 1,120,000 Philadelphia order matches the 2023 Tallchief and 2024 Indian Citizenship figures and continues the post-2018 contraction in NIFC output. For the program's reverse-rotation framework and the wider series context, see the Sacagawea Dollar series history.