Ok. Where's all the MS67 Illinois P State Quarters?

ms70

Who's hoarding them? Extremely few have shown up on eBay in PCGS holders & I've been watching for months. There's plenty
of Denvers though. So where are they??

Bikingnut

Wheres all the IL state quarters, period? Here in San Diego, I have only found one in circulation. That was just last week. No Alabama either.

bizzarri

got my mint bag of Maine D quarters last night. Nothing above MS66.

ms70

I haven't seen an Illinois yet either. I have seen Alabamas though.

cladking

It's interesting that people have taken these coins so much for granted. Everyone
knows that many millions of these are being saved in bags and rolls so few feel much
pressure to save any or to quickly update their sets. Oh sure, there really are huge
numbers being saved out. This probably is averaging in the vicinity of 50,000,000 for
each state/mm combination. And yes these coins will most assuredly never be rare in
our lifetimes.

The situation now is that mintages are plummeting because there is a huge backlog
of quarters at the fed and mint. These are circ coins which were set aside as long as
a few years ago and mountains of states issues. There are quite possibly a few '96-'98
coins also. So apparently the current situation is that a quarter billion of these are is-
sued for each coin and speculators and collectors pull out about 20% and the balance
mostly goes into storage. Those which do hit circulation are being pulled from circulation
by the legions of more casual and other collectors. This area has been supplied by the
Denver mint recently and these are the ONLY issues of the last four which can be found.

It wouldn't be the least surprising to see substantial increases in the BU roll prices again.
Don't get caught up in speculating in common grades of these coins though. If these in-
creases do materialize they can't last indefinitely. Eventually all these coins will get into
circulation and there are enough around to keep the prices from staying up. Prices could
go much higher if the masses get impatient and start feeling they're being left behind. It's
interesting since so many wrote off this program even before it started and it has been
packed with surprises if not varieties.

As with all clad, it is best to find coins in at least choice condition. There is very little pre-
mium, if any, to typical coins and they are sometimes much scarcer. It has yet to be shown
that typical coins can have much demand. Despite checking lots of circulating quarters, sev-
eral of the early issues were never found for my collection in choice condition. These are
now seldomly encountered in unc.