2026-D Polly Cooper, NIFC

Denver's 2026 Polly Cooper dollar closes the Native American $1 program's annual reverse rotation, which has run since 2009, and arrives in the year of the United States Semiquincentennial. The reverse, designed by Artistic Infusion Program artist Beth Zaiken and sculpted by Medallic Artist Craig Campbell, portrays Polly Cooper, an Oneida woman of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, holding a basket of white corn beside General George Washington, who lifts his hat in gratitude. The scene anchors a documented Valley Forge episode from the winter of 1777-1778: Cooper traveled with Chief Skenandoah and Han Yerry from Oneida country in central New York to the Continental Army encampment with a delivery of corn, then stayed and taught the soldiers that Iroquois white corn requires extended boiling and lye treatment to be edible. Continental cooks did not have that knowledge. The 2026 obverse keeps Glenna Goodacre's Sacagawea portrait but adds a Liberty Bell privy mark in the field below IN GOD WE TRUST, with the numeral 250 arranged vertically on the bell, the device that marks the Semiquincentennial across the Mint's 2026 product line.

What collectors look for on the Denver issue lives in surface preservation and in the new privy-mark strike, since every coin leaves the Mint inside packaging. The 2026-D is a NIFC issue, Not Intended For Circulation, produced for bag, roll, and set programs rather than commerce, so certified populations will cluster in MS66 and MS67 once submissions accumulate. The incused 250 on the Liberty Bell takes light contact during sealed-package handling, and the open field around Sacagawea's portrait shows bag marks readily, so MS68 and above will reward inspection of the privy-mark detail. No varieties have been published.

Inside the collecting landscape today, the 2026-D matters as the closing entry of the rotating-reverse program and as a 250th-anniversary coin, two collecting hooks the rest of the run does not carry. Mintage will be reported by the Mint after the production cycle closes; the figure is not yet finalized, and rolls are trading at modest premiums over face. Registry-set builders working the Native American program need the date, and Semiquincentennial-themed collectors are pulling examples for the privy-mark sub-set. For the program's reverse-rotation framework and the wider series context, see the Sacagawea Dollar series history.