Well at very least the Spanish Gallion symbolizes an outside society bringing disease and terror to our native populations :rolleyes:
I would have bet 25 cents that the Florida state quarter would have an orange on it.
Great googly-moogly, John Muir is much taller than I expected!
I love the Connecticut one. Nice design and a part of the state history that most people hadn’t heard of, other than the Charter Oak Bridge in Hartford. We done good. Thank God they didn’t use a nutmeg.
But if Connecticut HAD gone with the nutmeg, it would have been the only state to feature a hallucinogen on its quarter.
West Virginia went with a bridge. The first option for WV is really trippy (a quilt theme!), you should check it out.
I have no idea what they were thinking when they designed the quilt. I’m sure there are quilters in WV but if any state should have had a quilt it should have been Kentucky, which hosts this big international quilting convention every April.
I guess the bridge will do for WV. Better than a car on blocks in front of a rundown trailer. (Although that’d look interesting on a quarter.)
What a shame about California’s quarter. I’ve never understood why people make such a big deal about Yosemite when Sequoia’s just a hundred miles south, and IMHO, much prettier…and that’s even without the fact that it contains the largest living things on Earth. And I know that giant sequoias were amongst the designs submitted.
I suppose Yosemite and Muir have historical significance. But in my one visit to Northern California, Yosemite was a letdown after Sequoia.
I agree. I voted for the St. Augustine one, with the fort of San Marco. I’ve preferred those state coins which focused on one motif or landmark, and don’t care for the “cover all bases” kind. I had a bad feeling that the Florida one would turn out the same, and sure enough, they chose my least favorite design. It’s still better than Ohio’s though.
I hadn’t seen the earlier design that you linked to–the one with the “state outline, orange tree, palm tree, indian and gator, swordfish, capital building, and space shuttle.” Impressive, but they forgot the palmetto bugs–no representation of Florida fauna is complete without the mighty palmetto bug.
I think I actually have managed to see every state quarter that’s been released so far, but I was very disappointed in that of my home state, Michigan. Every finalist featured an outline of the state, which takes up too much space and doesn’t tell you a damn thing about the place (though Michigan does have that two peninsula thing going on, which I guess is special).
But, yeah, all it does is show that we touch four of the Great Lakes, and for some reason, they put Lake Ontario on there, too, even though Michigan doesn’t come into contact at all with it.
No Model T. No cherries. No Mackinaw Bridge. Just a stupid ol’ map. The problem is that even though the automotive industry is clearly Michigan’s biggest contribution to the world at large, there’s no way the Legislature, controlled by rural Republicans from towns you’ve never heard of, would actually, god forbid, let us acknowledge the part of the state that contains most of the people, most of the money and most of the state’s history.
This has been a bad year for quarters–designs and dessimination. I haven’t seen any from this year and am still waiting on a few from last year. I committed to collecting one for each of my three children (and a couple for myself) five years ago and lately it’s becoming a pain in the ass to get enough of each state.
Then I feel especially stupid looking around for several copies of one with a terrible design. I’d rather have Jackson Pollack contribute a quarter design than some of the ones I’ve seen.
Hurray! I got 5 Florida quarters in change today! Now I can concentrate on Texas and Michigan.
I think the Florida quarter depicts an historical meeting between ancient astronauts and the Spanish Armada, myself.
Nobody expects the Spanish Armada. Our chief weapon is the space shuttle…
from the article:
I like it. I like it. Dis quarter is fehntestic. But you know what it needs? A condor!
I hate, hate, hate our quarter. As I’ve said to my IRL friends, this quarter (and Arkansas’) looks like a low-quality THREE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY STATE project from a 3rd-grader who didn’t start until the night before. I voted for the Everglades quarter, because IMO it’s the most beautiful part of the state.
My personal design would have been a vast cloud of palmetto bugs, mosquitoes, and giant grasshoppers descending on an clueless tourist who has been made weak from the heat. Or a large car with Canadian plates causing a traffic jam in the left lane with little motion lines near one of their turn signals.
I’m not really certain how well those would look on a quarter, but I think theyd be worth a shot.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the Utah quarter. It’s supposed to feature a man surrounded by 17 wives.
Hey, at least they fixed our standard (non-specialty) license plate/tag: the orange used to look like a peach.
[FTR, the panther (specialty tag) finally looks like a ferocious animal, not an emaciated kitty-cat. However, the manatee still looks like it has a bad case of appendicitis.]
Me, I am rather amused by all the votes in that WV poll for the design featuring BASE-jumping.
In a related story…
When the hell did they decide to make State nickels? I received in change yesterday a 2004 Louisiana (I think) nickel. On the back was two hands grasped in a hand shake with I believe a reference to the LA Purchase.
I was in a bit of a rush and threw the change in my car’s arm rest. This thread has reminded me to check it on my way home from work.
Has anyone else seen these or was I hallucinating yesterday?
They aren’t really “state” nickels – they’re Louisiana Purchase nickels. Jefferson arranged the purchase, so his head’s on one side and the handshake is on the other. Later in the year, there’ll be a representation of Lewis & Clark’s expedition ship.
I could be wrong but I have a feeling that each new quarter is issued in the state being represented then slowly filter out to the rest of the country.