Alaska Quarters

Don't choose to collect, or choose not to collect with money value as the main overiding factor in your decision..........do it for the art and beauty and love of the hobby.......not for the quick turnaround buck.
And in that context.......YES !.....the Alaska Quarter is worth collecting !
It's, in fact, my favorite one of all !....

Amen to that! Buy the coins that you like! I buy the Keelboat and Bison Nickel BU rolls (instead of the Peace Medal rolls) because those are the designs that I like the best, and the fact that they're much cheaper than the P.M. rolls sure doesn't hurt!

Sometimes, the 'overlooked' coins of one point in time are the prized coins of a future point in time. If that happens to your favorite coin(s), then you have the pride in knowing that you didn't overlook a coin that 'everyone else' did.

Like I said, anyone who's trying to make a 'quick buck' sure isn't going to go for State Quarters (nor should they!). When I said some S.Q.'s will be "eventual keys", this process could take 20 years. It could take 50 years. It could take 100 years!
Who knows?! Maybe our great-grandchildren will be the ones getting rich off of our collections of 'low-mintage' state-design BU rolls...

I've had fun filling up some 50-state Quarter maps with AU coins pulled from circulation. The thrill of finding something nice from circulation is the 'root' of this hobby. No 'Box of Slabs' could ever match the thrill of finding a 'dream coin' in circulation. I have a few ASE's, but my favorite is a scratched, edge-dinged and polished 1989 (relax, it was already like that when I got it). Why is it my favorite? Because I got it from circulation!!

In the meantime, we can buy the State Quarter rolls that we like personally.
I'd have to say that I do like all five of the 2008's. This may be the 'best' year as a whole...

In the 'worst case scenario', if something like the "Half-Dime" Bill passes, and the Federal Reserve starts pulling Nickels from circulation and melting them, even a large portion of the general public may start hoarding any and all Nickels from circulation!

It's more likely that the Nickel denomination will be kept, and changed to nickel-plated steel, but even this would cause increased collector interest in earlier 'cupro-nickel' composition nickels. (and who's to say that the Fed couldn't still recall and melt the earlier nickels once the new ones were being minted?!)

I don't have a 'crystal ball', but I would say that there are enough possible events concerning the 5¢ coin to make the chance of some price appreciation a little more than "almost nonexistent".
Not to say that you should 'bet the farm' or plan to retire on Bison Nickels, but I don't think you could go too wrong having a couple of BU rolls of recent Nickels in your collection (just make sure you don't overpay for the W.J. nickels) You could even put away a roll or two of 2008's from your local bank, for face value!

Followup (07 Oct):
I gave this some more thought: "10%" of the Bison Nickel mintage would be approximately one million pairs of "P&D" Bison BU rolls (as sold by the Mint, to collectors). Many of those rolls have already been opened by people looking for the 'speared Bison' error coins.

So there's a lot less than one million pairs of Mint-wrapped BU Bison rolls already!

Still, the overall best bet for the roll of BU Nickels to 'hoard' (in view of a future 5¢ coin change) would have to be a $2 BU roll from your bank.
It's face value after all, and there's probably a lot less 2007-up BU Nickel rolls being saved/hoarded than for the WJ series.
The real 'winner' for $2 would be a BU roll of the 'last year' cupro-nickel 5¢ coins, whenever that is!

Alaska Quarters weren't even available in the Denver Mint Gift Shop until the second week in September!

I don't think the Alaska Quarter would "help" Sarah Palin, although
there may some additional temporary demand for this coin from Republicans at this time (due to Palin being from Alaska).
The more 'fitting' Obama Quarter would be 'Illinois', but that came out five years ago!

Coins are non-political: You'll find Democrats collecting Lincoln Cents and Eisenhower dollars, Republicans collecting Roosevelt dimes and Kennedy Half-Dollars, and Stock Brokers collecting American Eagles (ha ha, couldn't resist that last one! )

Typically bank tellers haven't got a clue about the distribution of coins and currency. It is unlikely a teller, even the head teller would know of Federal Reserve orders.



And they did come out then.



Most likely because your local banks have all the quarters on hand that they need and didn't order any during the pre-order window. Once that passed orders get filled from whatever quarters the Fed has on hand.



The Mint has NOTHING to do with the distribution of the coins. If the Fed doesn't order them they sit in the mint vaults. If the banks don't order them, then the Fed doesn't order them. (The banks in my area don't order quarters, they have plenty. They haven't made a special order for the State Quarters since Maryland. The only new State Quarters we get around here are those that get spent by people passing through. So far the only 2008 quarter I've seen in change locally has been one New Mexico Quarter.)

I'm not sure what's going on but today I went to the bank and asked for Alaska quarters and they said they didn't have any. So I asked for a regular roll (I need them for parking), and they didn't have any rolls at all. I asked if another branch may have some (this was the main branch) and the lady said she knew they did not.

What's up with all of that?

I think I would be VERY concerned if my bank didn't even have a roll of quarters on hand. (And they say that NONE of their branches have a roll of quarters either!!) I'd probably be looking at moving my account to a more solvent bank.

Especially considering that you can get them from just about any grocery store service counter (at least in Denver). I've even received new BU State Quarter rolls from grocery stores (which may be a bit 'inconvenient' if you just wanted to get quarters to use for spending!)