Thoughts on America the Beautiful Quarters

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’d resisted collecting them for years because I’d already spent 11 years collecting the first state quarters set and doing it all over again immediately seemed a bit obsessive. But one of my sons, who remembered my interest in the first set, gave me a few of the new ones as a gift at the beginning of the summer, and I decided what the heck. So at this point, not counting the most recent releases (which I’m not sure how long it will take before I can realistically expect to see them in circulation…though I’m sure that by this point after the Wisconsin-Apostle Islands release, I’d seen my share of those, so I’m surprised so have encountered no Minnesota-Voyageurs quarters yet), I’m down to missing only 11. Mundane, pointless thoughts:

  1. Boy, those 2010 and 2011 quarters had low circulation (confirmed by the mint’s web site). Of those years’ sets, I have only one each. I’m guessing there were a glut of quarters out there due to the popularity of the first set.
  2. Unlike the first set, I will probably never remember the order of their release. Obviously, they have years on them, and I know that the order is dictated by the date the sites were declared National Parks (or whatever), but it’s not as memorize-able as order of states joining the union.
  3. I love the originality of the South Dakota-Mount Rushmore design. I’m also fond of the Maryland-Fort McHenry one, it really brings the Star-Spangled Banner alive.
  4. I hate the Texas-San Antonio Missions design. I love that the designs (until that one) were depicting actual sites or events (with a little stylization on some of them), I do not like that one’s design which is completely artistic/symbolic. We had plenty of that in the first set.
  5. I’m a bit unhappy that for the Idaho-Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness quarter has the name of the site bleeding into the image portion of the coin. Hopefully the mint changes thing before the actual production work to either abbreviate the name, extend it in the border, or shrink the font to fit it in there.

Anyone else collecting these? Likes, dislikes, random thoughts?

2

The Big Crow thought he’s gotten a foreign coin in his change the other day. The light wasn’t great where we were and neither of us have the eyesight we used to, so it took me a moment to figure it was the Mount Rushmore quarter you linked to above. I’m glad you did. I didn’t really appreciate the perspective and detail at the time. Now I’ll have to get hold of another one to have another look.

Edited to add: I found the U.S. Mint webpage annoying because you have to click on a separate link for each quarter to see it. Just wanted to say that Wiki has images of all of them on one page. I plan to have a longer look at them tomorrow.

3

Well, I’m collecting them. I started with the state quarters, doing my best to save five shiny examples of every state as they came out. And when the National Parks and other ones followed, I started collecting them, too. No particular reason. It just seemed like a fun thing to do, and gave me a long-range project, which I always enjoy. It’s going on twenty years now, which boggles my mind, but I’m still enjoying the challenge of checking my pockets every night and marking off my list as I get each one that I need. It gives my life the illusion of meaning, I suppose!

4

I collected the State Quarters (SQ). The U.S. Mint did a good job of getting the word out that they were going to have the State Quarters program so I was ready and collected them as they were issued.

The mint utterly failed with the promotion of the ATB program. It wasn’t until I spied a few of the ATB quarters in my pocket change that I investigated and “discovered” the program. My interest may have been low anyway, from the SQ collecting effort, but it would be my opinion that the lack of adequate promotion may have lost many prospective casual collectors.