State Quarters

Ya I really like the national park quarters.I started a collection recently.I find them in my change all the time.

I like it!!

I used to save the State Quarters. But they are so common that they are not really worth saving, unless they are in high uncirculated or proof grades. Any coins that you get in change are worth 25 cents and will continue that way for a long time (maybe forever). So save them if you like them but don't save them for price appreciation.

I bought a box of empty tubes, and as I roll hunt for '76s and silver, I pull out the best looking state/ATB quarters for the tubes. My eventual plan is to buy another box so in the end I will have 1 box of tubes for D marks, and one for P marks. And then once the tubes fill up, I'll just replace any coin in the tube for upgrades only.

I personally just like the look of the coins. I doubt they will be worth enough for me to retire on them, so instead they are just for my personal satisfaction.

I really am not a big fan of them.My grandfather gave me the set that he collected,your right,only sentimental value.

Most definitely agree. While the mintage numbers may not be low by classical standards, they are (as stated) relatively low compared to the Statehood series. I also think that their real (long term) potential is as a conditional rarity (for the high end grades).

I think there's also damage to take into consideration; while we will never know how many of the State Quarters have been dropped down drains, flattened on the railroad tracks, put into quarter-rolling machines (like penny presses only for quarters), etc., I think we'll see that as the coin dump lessens the amount of BU/UNC hoards and circulation quickly destroys many of the designs, there will be a significant premium on coins that still meet the UNC standard.

A second thing to consider: you know how ganky, tatty '43 zinc cents are worth more* than shinyshiny zinc cents, because a shinyshiny zinc cent has almost certainly been replated with chrome or new steel? Think about how many of the Staties have been plated with silver or gold, or have been colorized. As it becomes obvious how many millions of the Staties have been damaged this way, the remaining AU/UNC quarters will go up in value because they'll turn out to be harder to find.

I used to collect Beanie Babies (yeah, yeah, I know, I know), and we had a very simple formula for determining rarity value for non-commemorative, non-error Beanies: Number of Beanies of a specific type (say, Iggy the Iguana) produced, minus ten percent. This ten percent was automatically discounted as destroyed (used as toys and presumed tagless). Then we subtracted fifty percent of the difference (so if you started with one million, now you have 900k and you're subtracting 450k), and said that this final value was the number of Beanies that we could reasonably expect as a "ceiling" for the number of mint-state Beanies--there would almost certainly be fewer than that number, but absolutely no more. From this number we derived value, which is why the original nine Beanies commanded such a premium--there weren't that many of them to start with, and when you took the number down that way, they were extremely rare.

I think State Quarter collectors in the future may establish such an equation to account for losses from improper storage (metal damage), circulation-to-death, etc. After all, classic coins are often expensive because they are the "only ones left"--you can't just go back in time and rescue an entire bag of coronet large cents from the Mint. If we still had every large cent ever minted, they'd be worth a couple of bucks--not twenty or thirty (grade notwithstanding). As it becomes obvious how many have been destroyed or repurposed (Daniel Carr, I'm looking at you), their relative rarity will increase.


*Most of the time. I'm sure even in wartime there were savvy grampas-and-grammas-still-to-be who set aside the coins right away in UNC/AU knowing that they would someday be rare and possibly valuable to their kids or grandkids.