Has anyone else noticed that the state quarter mintages are dropping, as each state quarter is made? Hope you have a good connection, cause I'm sein a small trend here in mintages for these. Down, Up, Down. Any comments on this would be nice, negative or positive.
There's no doubt that the Statehood quarter program has been very positive for the hobby, especially when you consider all the young people that have become interested in coin collecting as a result. Heck, I even put every one I get in a coffee can, and one of each new design in a folder. As far as mintage numbers go, I'm not so sure that a couple hundred thousand either way is going to make any of them hard to find. I mean we're still talking about almost half a billion issues.
Jody is correct. Even with the Mints numbers on people collecting (100 million), there are still plenty of statehood quarters to go around.
Yeah, didn't intend on implying that any of them would be hard to get, just the way the mintages were down, then up, then down. I'm fairly new to this, started a coupel years ago, so I'm trying to figure out how to spot certain trends on mintages of programs like the state quarters.
I think it's more of a reflection on the economy than on collectors. Most of the state quarters are still being used in commerce. Sure, there's a good amount being hoarded, but the thing is that when the economy gets bad it's more likely you'll see people cashing in those hoards which results in less need for new circulating coinage.
True. In a few years or even more, if a huge recession hits, we'll see boatloads of UNC and AU state quarters entering circulation.
Reminds me of all the bicentennial quarters my mother-in-law hoarded, regardless of condition. She had plenty of XF/AU pieces, and no matter how much I stated they were worth a quarter and were likely to *remain* worth a quarter, she kept them anyway, allowing inflation to eat away at their value. By the time she passed away last year, I think she had at least several hundred of them, if not more. That's not really much of a "hoard" given the mintages of these things, but still...
While there is likely some truth to this statement, it should be remembered that coin collecting got a huge boost during the great depression when people had a lot of time on their hands because they were unemployed. This could remove huge numbers of coins from circulation. A slower economy could result in an even greater decrease in coin demand, though. It's probably a moot point since a recession of this magnitude is not politically acceptable in the modern era.
I am not disputing this thing about the Depression, but it does surprise me. I seem to recall John Boy Walton scrambling to get his hands on every nickel he coul dbeg borrow or steal (well, he would never steal). I can't imagine he would have had a bookcase full of Whitman folders eating up valuable spending money. Also, while a recession may reduce the demand for coinage, it would not reduce the need for people to spend what they have hoarded. Especially when they find out that their state quarter hoard is only worth face value.
Obviously many people could not afford to tie up a lot of cash during the depression. This resulted in a decrease in the numbers of most BU rolls being set aside and no doubt got enormous amounts of older and marginally collectible coins back into circulation. But there were many people who could afford to at least set aside cents and some who could afford larger coins and BU rolls. The large increase in the numbers of collectors during this era set up the roll and bag craze of the mid-1960's. The bulk of the new collectors were primarily interested in the circulating coins and this continued right up to the introduction of clad and the collapse of the speculative markets. Many people define modern coins as those dated since 1934 simply because it is these coins which tend to be more readily available in rolls. This definition, however, ignores the fact that roll saving collapsed in 1965 and did not restart until 1998.
