W mint mark quarters to be released in circulation!

I bet the bank tellers get most of them.

 

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Here is a video of the W quarters being produced and added to ballistic bags (from US Mint Facebook page):



Enjoy, TC

 

If these are put in ballistic bags as the video I posted above shows, I can’t imagine too many gems.

 

Yep, the gems will be more rare than the total mintage, however 99% of the total mintage will probably be pulled from circulation with most still grading unc. I imagine, at first, they'll be way over priced for a 2M coin mintage, which is 2-3 times the mintage of the S-Mint business strikes, the current lowest minted one being Apostle Islands at around 888K. At least these W's should give a boost to the entire AtB series, as well as coin collecting in general.

 

I'm figuring most of the production will be Gems. Then being in the tops of the bags assure they'll stay Gem right into the hoppers at the counting houses. If they empty the hoppers between bag then many of these will suffer little dinging and scraping in the bottom of the hopper. But even if they don't empty it they'll be relatively protected by the lower forces at the bottom of the hopper. Direct collisions will mark up some percentage as the fresh bag is dumped on top.

Try as I might I'm not picturing a mad dash to check billions of brand new coins before they get in circulation nor do I picture any mechanism for the vast majority of the coins to hit circulation. Frankly, I expect only about 5% to get plucked out of bags and boxes of new coins rolled from those bags. Half of these will be Gem.

I'm expecting most of them to be found mixed in mixed circulating rolls. These will account for as much as 15% of production if they are wildly popular. The rest will be in commerce because there is no mechanism any longer to intercept them. The counting houses are under contract to return defective coin to the mint and I wager workers will not be allowed to get more than a very very few of these. They can alert others to the destinations though.

I suspect everyone is going to be pretty surprised how this plays out. I figure about 150,000 BU's of the first dates and trending up across the program. Nearly half will be Gem but they will be too common to get much premium for grade (except for outliers). The rest will trickle in for a very long time. Most will be AU but they will exist all the way down to a high end VF. Of course, now days quarters get a lot of wear from machines that leave little scars all over them so even XF's will often look like road kill.

It's going to be interesting and it's going to spur interest in parks, states, and all clad quarters (especially parks). A lot of these parks quarters are much tougher than most of the states coins.

 

I don't know, I agree with much of what you said, but I think there's going to be a mad rush to banks for many rolls/bags, it may even create a shortage of quarters for commerce, the banks are going to go nuts. In the small town I'm in (pop 9k), I've already had 3 customers telling me their bank will order all they want, the last guy was going to order $5,000 face value. The distribution stats you site may apply to coins with certain demand, but I think this one, will be substantially picked by people like me and the rest, if publicized, will have the whole country plucking them from their pockets the first time they're handed out as change. Just one other way it could playout, it will be interesting.

 

I can't see that happening, because the folks who order multiple boxes certainly aren't going to just sit on their rejects. This isn't going to be anything at all like the shift to clad coinage, where suddenly all the currently circulating coins get snatched up and hoarded.

 

We'll see. There are other examples of shortages created by hoarding, the 1974-s cent comes to mind. The banks softened the shortage by requiring us to buy new boxes of cents with old boxes of cents.

 

I doubt that dude is gonna stand around with his one scoop of raisen bran to dump on the top of each bag. That was more likely just for the video effect.

 

Wow! I'm a big fan of anecdotal evidence, even second hand.

I hope you're right. I'd rather nice specimens not be too hard to find.

The mint could always hide them better if collectors get too good at finding them. They did something similar with '74-S cents.

 

The 74-s cent is a long story. The mint announced they would stop production of 74-s (business strikes) when about half the production of 73-s cents had been reached. They instantly went to $5/roll wholesale. I must have sold 30 boxes to dealers all up & down the SF Peninsula and held 5 boxes for myself. Then Mary Brookes, director of the mint, sent out a press release stating, "She is appalled at the speculation", and she decided to make a full run of 74-s cents, instantly killing the price.

 

Back in 2009 when the Lincoln Cent design change hit sealed boxes were hitting $300-$500 a box. My brotherinlaws sister is married to a banker. Anyways, he asked him if he could get him some 2009 Boxes. The dude was loading up his jet and flying them into Detroit. After awhile, he started complaining they were too heavy. I'd told my brotherinlaw, just drive out and pick them up.
Dude owns 26 banks, I wonder if he should call him up?

 

(just kidding ;-)

 

He ain't my guy. I sent a message off to my nephew with some links.

 

I forgot or never knew this. If I remember right my only contact with the hobby in 1974 were intermittent issues of COINage. All I knew was they mixed a lot of the production with other coins because they believed too many were being intercepted.

I suspect the sm dts of these might someday be a winner but it's a tough call since it's hard for me to gauge how many are out there.

 

I forsee high initial prices, followed by a slow and steady crash as more turn up.

 

I've been saving rolls of S mint quarters...will the mint sell rolls of Ws?

 

No offense, but I think you are missing the point of this. Its a coin hunt by design. If they were simply sold by the Mint, it wouldn't be a coin hunt.

 

So... the Mint has implied that these will only be released into circulation, but I wonder if there's still a possibility they'll be sold as a product later in the year? That would hurt the Mint's credibility for future stunts, but as long as they kept quiet about their plans, it wouldn't have impeded the excitement this month.

 

I'm within about 50 miles of one of the first drop cities. Waiting patiently to get mine.