Presidents on U.S. Currency

Quick: Which president is on the dollar coin? Which one is on $500 bill? We use cash almost every day, but who actually knows which president in on which coin or note? In case you’ve ever wondered about the selection process, the U.S. Mint tells us that Congress selects the presidents for coins.

Here’s a list of presidents on our currency:

Coins
Penny — Abraham Lincoln
Nickel — Thomas Jefferson
Dime — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Quarter — George Washington
Half Dollar — John F. Kennedy
One Dollar — Dwight D. Eisenhower (minted from 1971 to 1978)

Notes

Wikipedia shows samples of bills used from 1928 to 2003:
$1 — George Washington
$2 — Thomas Jefferson
$5 — Abraham Lincoln
$20 — Andrew Jackson
$50 — Ulysses S. Grant
$500 — William McKinley (no longer in circulation)
$1,000 — Grover Cleveland (no longer in circulation)
$5,000 — James Madison (no longer in circulation)
$100,000 — Woodrow Wilson (no longer in circulation)

And we all remember the redesign in 2004 (the design changed but the presidents remained the same).

Interesting factoid: There is (or was, since it’s no longer in circulation) a $10,000 bill, but that featured Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase.

If you’re curious about which president graced what currency in the past, here’s a comprehensive list.