I guess that I am naive. I thought that states with bigger populations would have a larger mintage of state quarters; clearly this is not the case. For example, the New York Quarter had a mintage about double of that for the California Quarter. Since California has a larger population than New York, it would seem logical that the California Quarter would have a larger mintage. My question is who decides the mintage and how is it decided? As of now, the largest total mintage appears to be for Virginia while Maine has the smallest mintage.
I actually kind of assumed that they made the same amount for each state, just like with the new presidential dollars they are making the same amount of coins per president. It appears I was wrong though. http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/coin_production/index.cfm?action=production_figures I assume they make the quarters as they find out how many more are needed at the time. I'm not sure how that is determined though, maybe someone else can enlighten us.
Maybe the US Mint waits to hear from the banks to learn if more quarters are needed. Evidently, the popularity and population of the states have nothing to do with the mintage of the state quarters. As for Presidential Dollars, one would think that they would mint a large number for Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and JFK because they are popular but that probably is not a consideration. We might never know how the Mint decides which coin to produce the most of. As coin collectors, this is really crucial and we should be told.
The Federal Reserve tells the mint how many to make each year, only they tell them the year before. The same is true with all denominations.
