Steve Jobs’ Legacy Celebrated by US Mint with New $1 Coin
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On Wednesday, the United States Mint previewed the design of a new $1 American Innovation Coin featuring Steve Jobs, which it will begin producing soon.
The $1 Steve Jobs coin features a young Jobs dressed in his familiar turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers. He’s shown sitting before a landscape of rolling California hills, captured in a moment of meditation.
According to the US Mint’s official description:
This design presents a young Steve Jobs sitting in front of a quintessentially northern California landscape of oak-covered rolling hills. His posture and expression, as he is captured in a moment of reflection, show how this environment inspired his vision to transform complex technology into something as intuitive and organic as nature itself. Inscriptions are “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and “CALIFORNIA.” Additional inscriptions are “STEVE JOBS” and “MAKE SOMETHING WONDERFUL.”
The Steve Jobs coin will be available for purchase from the US Mint website when it launches in 2026. The collectible version will be priced at $13.25 for a single coin or $27.50 for a four-coin set featuring other innovators and innovations. Rolls of 25 coins and bags of 100 will also be offered.
The American Innovation series began in 2018, with each US state nominating an innovator or invention to be commemorated on a $1 coin. California Governor Gavin Newsom nominated Jobs earlier this year, saying the Apple co-founder “encapsulates the unique brand of innovation that California runs on.”
By focusing on who he was innovating for — other people — Jobs was able to use technology to connect people to each other and to the broader world, bringing people onto the same level by providing them with equal access. And that approach was built on a willingness to try new ideas and push the boundaries of what was possible — an approach that embodies the California spirit.
California Governor Gavin Newsom
Steve Jobs was the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, where he helped launch a series of industry-defining computers and devices over the course of nearly four decades. He and Steve Wozniak first created the Apple Computer Company, later renamed Apple Inc. in 2007 to reflect the company’s broader focus beyond computers. Among its earliest successes was the Apple II, one of the first mass-produced microcomputers. In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, the first mass-market personal computer to feature a graphical, WYSIWYG interface controlled with a mouse rather than just a keyboard, at a time when most computers still relied on text-based commands.
Jobs once said 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.”
The Macintosh was only the beginning of Apple’s reshaping of the technology landscape. Under Jobs’ leadership, the company went on to create the iPod, which transformed the way people listened to and purchased music, and later the iPhone and iPad — devices that redefined entire industries and forced competitors to rethink their own strategies.
