1 Dollar American Innovation - Alabama

Alabama's innovation dollar honors the work of Dr. Charles Drew, whose research into blood plasma storage in the late 1930s directly enabled the large-scale blood bank systems used during World War II. The program itself — one dollar per state per year — was authorized under the American Innovation $1 Coin Act of 2018, giving the Mint a 56-coin run stretched across more than a decade.

These see almost no circulation. The manganese-brass composition was retained from the Presidential dollar series largely because the alloy satisfies vending machine sensor requirements, a practical constraint that has quietly governed U.S. dollar coin specifications since the Susan B. Anthony.