I wanted to bogart a thread I saw from a couple of months ago, and get the opinions of all the folks on the forum. What do you think about the SHQ program? Ignore the coins for a minute, and assess the impact the program has had on coin collecting in general or specific changes that it has brought about. Is this a good thing? Standing back........ Cris
A very good thing!!! Brought some excitement to our boring coins, and probably helped revive the coin market overall!!! Every state has a unique and special contribution to our nation's heritage, so I have been a big fan of this from day one!! Now, presidental dollars, not a good thing. As we have detailed on other threads, the interest in having many bad to mediocre presidents on coins and (gasp!) their first ladies on gold coins would be numismatic garbage.
Well I didn't add my comments earlier, so here goes. I think it is a huge boon to coin collecting and for the most part has been a really good thing. There are down sides (namely the price of a Morgan, and other outrageous by-products of people getting into the hobby and branching out), but I think in the long run everything will balance itself out. My opinion, this is a pivotal point in the hobby, the last being the introduction of grading services.
The State Quarters program has been a tremendous success and, like rbm86 put said, it has stimulated an incredible amount of interest in the coin collecting. As a matter of fact, I do not think any of us will be able to truly judge just how successful it was until many years from now. Think of how many kids are collecting state quarters today. Although they may not have a tremendous interest in numismatics in general, the quarters have piqued their interest. In all likelihood, as these young kids approach adulthood, some of them will remember those state quarters and develop an interest in coin collecting! I anticipate a flood of new collectors about 20 years from now ;-)