A Dollar for Your Thoughts: The Steve Jobs Innovation Coin Arrives
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As expected, the United States Mint is now offering a new $1 American Innovation Coin featuring Steve Jobs. The new commemorative coin is now available for purchase from the United States Mint website.
“I’m pleased to celebrate the release of the California American Innovation $1 Coin,” said Mint Director Paul Hollis. “Steve Jobs was a remarkable innovator and transformed how the world connects and communicates. Through this coin, the Mint honors his incredible work and recognizes his importance to both California and the United States.”
The coin’s design features a young Steve Jobs sitting in front of a northern California landscape of oak-covered rolling hills. He is captured in a moment of reflection. The design is balanced by several key inscriptions: “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and “CALIFORNIA” flank the portrait, while “STEVE JOBS” and his famous ethos, “MAKE SOMETHING WONDERFUL,” anchor the design.
As noted by The Steve Jobs Archive, the final inscription is a tribute to a broader sentiment Jobs shared during an internal company town hall held on October 23, 2007.
There’s lots of ways to be as a person, and some people express their deep appreciation in different ways, but one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there.
The United States Mint announced in 2018 that it would begin honoring American innovation and pioneering efforts of individuals or groups with $1 coins. An offering will be issued for each of the 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and the five US territories.
The Steve Jobs Archive championed the design, alongside California governor Gavin Newsom. The Archive said Jobs “felt a deep sense of connection to and gratitude for California’s natural beauty.”
“The innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of Steve Jobs embodied the best of California, creating the future we all know today,” said Newsom in a press release announcing the coin’s circulation. “His tenacity and fearless pursuit of the California Dream made so many American dreams possible. May we all attempt to fill his shoes as we seek our own California Dreams.”
The collectible coins are available as a roll of 25 for $61, or $2.44 each. A bag of 100 coins can be purchased for $154.50, bringing the per coin cost down to approximately $1.55. Buyers can choose to receive coins minted in either Denver or Philadelphia. There will be a total 25,950 Steve Jobs dollar coins manufactured. According to Mactrast, the Mint is keeping a tight lid on supply — household orders are capped at 10 units for both the 100-coin bags and the 25-coin rolls.
The Mint says the Secretary of the Treasury selects the final design for each coin.
Previous coins honored other states and their innovations, including Pennsylvania (the Polio vaccine), New Jersey (the lightbulb), Ohio (the Underground Railroad), and Texas (the International Space Station). So far, 33 states have had coin designs released or revealed.
Steve Jobs was the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, where he helped launch a series of industry-altering computers and devices over nearly four decades. Jobs and Steve Wozniak originally founded the Apple Computer Company — a name that stood until it was rebranded as Apple Inc. in 2007 with the launch of the first iPhone.
The company’s earliest successes included the Apple II, one of the first mass-produced microcomputers, and the 1984 debut of the Macintosh, the first mass-market personal computer to feature a graphical, WYSIWYG interface controlled with a mouse in addition to a keyboard. At the time, most computers still relied on text-based interfaces.
Jobs has been quoted as saying the Macintosh was designed to “bridge the gap between sophisticated technology and ‘the rest of us’ who make up most of humanity… to make complex technology easy to use and fun to use.”
Jobs’ leadership resulted in the company going on to create the iPod, which completely changed the way people purchased and listened to music, and later the iPhone and iPad, both of which revolutionized the portable device industry.
