2011-S Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential $1 Coin Proof: A Collector’s Guide

By Charles Morgan and Hubert Walker for CoinWeek Notes ….

The 2011-S Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Dollar Proof is a collector version of the Hayes Dollar coin struck at the San Francisco Mint as part of the Presidential Dollar series.

Congress intended the release of these designs, honoring America’s past Presidents, to engage the American public with the nation’s history and revitalize the failing golden dollar coin program, but sadly, the series suffered the same fate as the small dollar coin series that came before. After an initial burst of production and modest circulation, further demand failed to materialize and the coin faded from public view and memory.

Not helping matters was the fact that most of the publicity surrounding the Presidential Dollars after the program’s launch was largely negative, focusing on the government waste angle of striking dollar coins when the public overwhelming supported the $1 bill, and for the conspiratorial, a flaw in the Mint’s production process occasionally resulted in coins without edge lettering. As this was the place that the national motto IN GOD WE TRUST was placed, these mistruck coins were labelled “Godless Dollars”. To some, it was a sign that the Obama Administration had purposefully removed God from our nation’s coins. Such was the deep seated paranoia that lay manifest after more than a century of culture war.

Congress, embarrassed by the news coverage and public outrage, forced the Mint to move the motto to the obverse of the coins starting in 2009. This cramped the design of the coin, but nobody seemed to care.

Rutherford B. Hayes’s Complicated Life and Legacy

Rutherford Birchard Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, served a single term from 1877 to 1881. Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822. His father died ten weeks before his birth, so Hayes was raised by his mother, Sophia Birchard, and his uncle, Sardis Birchard. Before becoming president, Hayes was a principled attorney, a war hero, and a governor.

Hayes earned his law degree in 1845, he defended a range of clients, including escaped slaves, which he took on pro bono. A staunch abolitionist, Hayes advocacy for the rights of African Americans stands in sharp contrast to the narrative that developed around his presidency that he turned his backs on the plight of blacks in order to win the election of 1876.

When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Hayes abandoned his law practice to join the Union Army, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major general. During the Battle of South Mountain on September 14, 1862, he was seriously wounded while leading the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment in a charge at Fox’s Gap. Struck in the left arm by a musket ball that fractured his humerus, Hayes nonetheless staunched the bleeding with a handkerchief and continued to lead his men. Despite heavy losses, his regiment held the position, and Hayes was commended for his leadership under fire. He was one of five future presidents who served in the war—and the only one wounded in combat.

Hayes’s most significant political platform, however, was as a three-term governor of Ohio. His first two terms from 1868 to 1872 were marked by key achievements, including Ohio’s ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and the establishment of the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, which later became The Ohio State University.

The economic depression that followed the Panic of 1873 had begun to shift the national conversation from the “race question” to financial stability. For his third gubernatorial campaign in 1875, Hayes successfully campaigned on a platform centered on a “sound currency backed by gold” infused with some of the Republican Party’s anti-Catholic bias.

Hayes’s 1875 victory demonstrated his political acumen in adapting to the prevailing economic winds and signaled a fundamental shift in American political priorities and positioned him as a pragmatic and electable choice for the Republican presidential nomination in 1876.

A Deal With the Devil

Following the war, Hayes’s political career took off rapidly, mainly within the “Half-Breed” faction of the Republican Party. The Half Breeds stood in opposition to the Stalwarts, over the issue of political patronage and civil service reform. The Stalwarts, who were also known as the “Old Guard” Republicans, were in favor of the traditional spoils system, which rewarded political supporters with government jobs. The Half-Breeds, by contrast, advocated for a merit-based system for government appointments.

Hayes served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1865 to 1867, consistently supporting the Radical Republican agenda for Reconstruction. A firm believer in civil rights, he voted for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Reconstruction Acts, which sought to secure citizenship and voting rights for African Americans. His legislative efforts demonstrated a clear and long-standing commitment to the very principles that would later be said to have been sacrificed in the election of 1876.

Hayes’s four-year presidency was often overshadowed by the tumultuous election that brought him to power. However, it was a period of crucial, albeit modest, reform that laid the groundwork for future change. Hayes’s central domestic policy was his crusade for civil service reform, a direct response to the patronage and corruption that had defined the Grant years. Hayes sought to dismantle the “spoils system,” which rewarded political supporters with government jobs, by advocating for a system based on merit. Ironically, on this issue, Hayes and his Democratic rival, Samuel Tilden, aligned.

On the economic front, Hayes was a “hard-money” advocate, opposing inflationary policies and insisting that a return to the gold standard was essential for economic recovery. Hayes famously vetoed the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which would have required the Treasury to purchase and coin more silver into circulation, but a bipartisan coalition led by Congressional Democrats overrode the veto. As a result, the extensive minting and stockpiling of Morgan Dollars commenced, many of which remain uncirculated to this day.

Hayes’s administration also faced the unprecedented challenge of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the first major labor dispute in the United States. At the request of state governors, he took the controversial step of dispatching federal troops to suppress the riots, an action that had never been taken before in a labor dispute. Approximately 100 people were killed across multiple cities in clashes between strikers, state militias and private security forces, and federal troops.

Fables of the Reconstruction

It was historian C. Vann Woodward, in his 1951 book Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction, who advanced the interpretation that Hayes’s allies and Southern Democrats entered into a corrupt bargain to ensure the Republicans secured the presidency.

The allure of such a theory was strong enough that even during Hayes’s administration, his opponents handed the 19th president the unflattering moniker, “His Fraudulency.”

The question isn’t whether Hayes ended Reconstruction. It’s why did the Republican Party fail to prevent the reassertion of Confederate elements—meaning the ideologies, power structures, and sympathizers of the former Confederacy—in the post-Civil War South.

The Republican Party had already begun to soften its policies toward the South, primarily because it no longer held the political upper hand. When Hayes ordered federal troops to return to their barracks, it was with promises by Democratic leaders in Louisiana and South Carolina to respect the civil and voting rights of African Americans. However, these promises were unsurprisingly soon broken, and Democrats quickly established dominance over the South. As a result, Black voters were disenfranchised through literacy tests, poll taxes, violence, and intimidation. While Hayes’s efforts to protect Black suffrage proved to be ineffective, it is considered inaccurate to attribute the later Jim Crow laws, which came years after his presidency, directly to him.

Collecting the 2011-S Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Dollar Proof

The 2011 Presidential Dollar Proof Set, which includes the 2011-S Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Dollar was released on February 22, 2011 with sets priced at $19.95 each.

The Hayes Dollar Proof was one of four designs included in the 2011 set. The other dollar coins honored Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and James Garfield. The Mint reported sales of 1,972,863 2011-S Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Dollars across all product options. Today, the 2011 Presidential Dollar Proof Sets sell for about $10 each, while the Hayes Dollar sells for about $3 each as an uncertified single coin.

The two certified grades most frequently associated with the Hayes Dollar are Proof 69 and Proof 70. 69s sell for a slight premium over raw coins, while 70s sell for about $15-$20 each, depending on the venue.

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Market Data and Noteworthy Specimens

Top Population: PCGS PR70DCAM (1,227, 9/2024), NGC PF70UCAM (2,112, 8/2025), and CAC PR70DCAM (1, 8/2025).

• PCGS PR70DCAM: eBay, August 20, 2025 – $17.94. 6 bids.
• PCGS PR70DCAM: eBay, August 18, 2025 – $16.50. 6 bids.
• PCGS PR70DCAM: eBay, August 16, 2025 – $13.01. 5 bids.
• PCGS PR70DCAM: eBay, August 14, 2025 – $10.75. 5 bids.
• PCGS PR70DCAM: eBay, August 12, 2025 – $15.50. 6 bids.
• PCGS PR70DCAM: eBay, August 10, 2025 – $11.60. 4 bids.

Design

Obverse:

Rutherford B. Hayes is depicted in profile, facing right. Across the top of the design, bordering the rim, is the inscription “RUTHERFORD B. HAYES.” Don Everhart’s initials “DE” appear at the right tip of the bust truncation. In smaller text along the bottom of the design are the inscriptions “IN GOD WE TRUST,” “19th PRESIDENT,” and “1877-1881.”

Common Reverse:

Don Everhart’s reverse design features an ant’s-eye view of the Statue of Liberty offset to the left. On the coin, Liberty occupies the bottom right quadrant of the coin, her extended elbow being the coin’s center point. The design is framed by a thin inner circle, which separates the graphic design from the legend UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Beneath Liberty’s extended torch-bearing arm is the denomination $1. This is the common reverse design for all Presidential Dollar coins.

Edge:

The edge of the Presidential Dollar is lettered and features the motto E PLURIBUS UNUM, the mintmark, the year of issuance, and 13 five-pointed stars. This edge inscription may be oriented facing the obverse (Position A) or the reverse (Position B).

Coin Specifications

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