The 1987 Constitution Silver Dollar

On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine men signed a document that began with three words: "We the People." Two hundred years later, the United States wanted to throw a birthday party — and pay it forward.

Congress authorized the coin in the Act of October 29, 1986 (Public Law 99–582), pushed through largely by Representative Frank Annunzio of Illinois, a tireless champion of commemorative coinage. The law cleared the Mint to strike up to 10 million silver dollars and one million $5 gold pieces to mark the Constitution's bicentennial.

Here is the twist that makes this coin worth a second look. Every dollar carried a $7 surcharge — a markup baked into the price — and that money was earmarked to reduce the federal debt. A commemorative coin, in other words, designed to help pay the government's bills. The program raised tens of millions of dollars toward that goal. It is one of the rare moments where a collector's keepsake doubled as a tiny act of national bookkeeping.

The Mint did something unusual to find the design: it held a contest. Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III opened a competition in which eleven outside sculptors were invited to compete alongside six Mint engravers, each paid $2,000 to submit four sketches whether or not their work was chosen.

The winner was Patricia Lewis Verani, a New Hampshire sculptor and graduate of the Boston Museum School. Her obverse — the heads side — is quiet and literal: a quill pen laid across a sheaf of parchment, with the words "We the People" running along the bottom in the bold script of the document itself. It is the act of writing the Constitution, frozen in metal.

The reverse — the tails side — widens the lens. It shows a cross-section of Americans drawn from different eras, a visual argument that "We the People" was never a fixed group but a growing one. The relief — the raised depth of the design — is restrained and modern, in keeping with the coin's plainspoken theme.

This is an accessible coin, and that is part of its charm — a genuine 90% silver dollar from a one-year program, available without a treasure hunt.

Two versions exist, separated by mint and finish. The 1987-P is the uncirculated (business-strike) coin from Philadelphia, with 451,629 made — the scarcer of the two. The 1987-S is the proof — a coin struck twice on polished dies to give mirror-like fields and frosted devices — from San Francisco, with 2,747,116 made. Proofs were the runaway seller; collectors gravitated to the shinier presentation.

Because mintages are healthy and the coins were carefully packaged by the Mint, top-grade survivors are common, and most examples carry modest premiums over their silver content. The collector's interest here is less about rarity and more about completeness: this dollar is a fixture in any run of modern commemoratives, and the open-contest design plus the national-debt surcharge give it a story most one-ounce silver pieces can't match. Watch condition closely — in a series where high grades are plentiful, the eye-appeal of a flawless proof is what separates one example from the next.