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Pondering ATB Quarters
GritsMan
Posts: 2,599 ✭✭✭
I'm a big fan of the 5-ounce ATB slugs, and like many of the ATB designs. Looking at mintages of the regular quarters, though, I note that current releases have mintages of roughly tenfold over those of the first couple of years, but there's barely a premium on rolls of any of them. To me, this indicates that there is virtually no collector base for these coins—or one that is so low as to be barely detectable. Thoughts? What are dealers seeing out there?
Winner of the Coveted Devil Award June 8th, 2010
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I could see why there isn't much of a premium for the bullion issues, but I thought that the collector versions were selling high compared to their release price. Actually I had thought that both the collector and bullion versions were selling well over their release price, at least for the first couple years of the series.
The states coins were prefentially made available to banks in BU rolls and most customers could pick up rolls of the most current issue. Banks didn't even have limits on the numbers of rolls of the discontinued issues. Many people were picking these up in rolls but now there's far less interest and none of the ATB's are available unless they just happen to have "new" rolls (dating back as much as 3 years) in stock.
Rolls are being set aside but it's difficult to gauge numbers. Of course these coins are available from the treasury from three mints and in mint sets.
None are going to be scarce like the early clads but their popularity might soar when the program winds down and there aren't large numbers available as with most of the states coins.
Of course these coins are available from the treasury from three mints and in mint sets.
Rolls and 100-coin bags of uncirculated 2015 Blue Ridge Parkway quarters, offered to collectors on the Mint’s website, recently went off sale. Slightly less than 1,000,000 each of the P&D quarters were purchased by collectors from this offering.
The “S” mintage is where things get interesting. The mint sold 14,969 rolls and 4979 bags, for total sales of 1,096,660. This is the entire mintage for this coin! It’s not available anywhere else – not in mint sets and not in circulation. And much of that mintage is going to roll and mini-bag collectors, leaving fewer single coins available for future sets.
Many collectors are not even aware that this coin exists! Yet it was available for months on the Mint’s website at prices as low as 35 cents each. And the 2015 Bombay Hook and Saratoga quarters, still available in bags at 35 cents per coin from the Mint, appear to be headed for similar final mintages. The “S” mint coins have been included in the Mint’s offerings since 2012, and mintages have been gradually declining since the 2012 El Yunque debut of about 1.7 million coins.
When a modern circulation-strike coin with less than half the mintage of the 1950-D nickel is ignored by most of the collecting community, that tells me that ATB quarters are definitely off the radar.
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Just passed it on to my young nephews in Phoenix to complete. They'll probably have better luck finding D-mint coins than I did here in Georgia.
It doesn't seem to me that I'm doing anything other than paying $35 for $25 in quarters that take up space, but I really like the designs of most of them.
Whether I'll ultimately make any money on them or whether my kids will just drop them in a Coinstar someday remains to be seen.
The mint has killed the golden goose with far too many new issue items. Other than flippers, does anyone even care anymore? (And just who do the flippers actually flip to these days?)
Not yet.
I fear they are headed in that direction with so many mints offering so many different products, most of which are wholly unjustified and came into existence merely to profit the mint.
But so far the public is still buying the stuff and are even willing to pay more for things like First Strikes or PR-70 even of items that shouldn't exist.
In the stamp hobby this proved highly detrimental. A similar thing even happened with sports cards.
However the fact remains that much of the mint's output is fully justified. People demand silver so they produce eagles. One might not appreciate the reused design but that a silver coin needs to be made is apparent by their large mintages and market share.
By the same token they must make coins for circulation and these couldn't be more justified or appropriate. This is the reason the mints exist at all; to produce a medium of exchange (or at least change for paper). The desirability of something like a 1971 clad dime or a 2006 clad quarter can't be affected by the mint killing geese. Such coins might be in demand someday just as related things like proof sets and S-mint circulation issues.
It would be nice to see the mints get back to basics like making nice high quality coins that are attractive and useful in commerce. Instead we get more pennies, pocket change, and "coins" that shouldn't exist. They will eventually damage these markets if it continues long enough.
No one cares about state parks. Little kids need to know all the states and collecting them is a way to teach geography. There is no similar context for ATB coins.
Chalk it up to "It seemed like a good idea at the time" and it goes back to Sales and Marketing at the Mint having NO idea what collectors like and why. The lack of knowledge of numismatics in that organization is appalling.
Just MHO
The primary problem with the ATB quarters are twofold. The first is the burnout from the State Quarters that ran 10 years and had an extra one added for territories as the Mint continued to milk that product. The second issue is the complete lack of a constituency for this series. The State Quarters had each state where people would want coins from their state. Governors and other state officials often were involved in the release, etc.
No one cares about state parks. Little kids need to know all the states and collecting them is a way to teach geography. There is no similar context for ATB coins.
Chalk it up to "It seemed like a good idea at the time" and it goes back to Sales and Marketing at the Mint having NO idea what collectors like and why. The lack of knowledge of numismatics in that organization is appalling.
Just MHO
Interesting perspective, DeepCoin. The lack of a strategy rumbled somewhere in the back of my head, but you articulated it well. I wish they had released the ATBs first as I like the designs better and (in most cases) they show some of the real beauty/interest of each state. I mean, a diamond for Arkansas, a cowboy for Wyoming? They've done much better with the ATB designs and I wish a generation of kids had been exposed to those instead of the Chamber of Commerce-driven designs for the State Quarters.