Why did the general public lose interest in the State Quarters series?
291fifth
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... and never develop interest in the National Parks Quarters series?
Back when the State Quarters series started there seemed to be considerable interest. My local dealer stocked Unc. P & D examples of all the coins. By the time the National Parks series started the same dealer had stopped stocking them at all. He said there was not enough interest to be bothered.
All glory is fleeting.
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Because they're ugly.
The theme of National Parks is nothing compared to U.S. States. I wish that they followed up with the President series on Quarters.
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I think part of it is familiarity.
For the state quarters, many people know the states and have visited them.
For the park quarters, I'm guessing many people aren't familiar with the parks or know how many there are. I used to visit many national parks but am not familiar with many of the ones depicted on the coins and don't know how many are in the series. For collectors, I think the pucks also made the standard size coins less interesting.
Fatigue.
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If you collected them at the time you lost money. Way too many where made. People like their collectable to go up in value and not down.
10 years of States Quarters is JUST TOO MANY! Not that anyone really had any better options....
Plus, I think some patiently awaited THEIR state, then lost interest once it passed. Considering that many of the most populous states came quite early in the series, you were losing a lot of people with each passing issue.
The ATB quarters 1) didn't have the same anticipation, and 2) were mostly confusing to many (including me). Not many had been to most of them, or could even identify why they were national parks.
It won't be so long now till we get the new design.
Perhaps that will remind them.
I think the parks quarters were seen negatively by the general public. The FED and banks had cooperated for years to get each new issue to the public but interest was waning after about 2006. When long time collectors tried to obtain the new parks coins there was no such agreement and the effort to get rolls proved almost impossible. There was more than a little grumbling in banks after '09.
The reception of the mainstream hobby to newbies early on was problematical. But the larger problem was the huge number of coins set aside was ample to the demand. Only a couple of the coins are still of interest to the wholesalers.
Most of the wounds shouldn't be sufficient to keep many out permanently. Collecting coins has a lot going for it and even the most casual state quarter collector will pick up on this.
Last weekend I asked for quarters at the local bank and they have me 14 rolls of state quarters in the special wrappers from the mint. They said their ladt shipment was made up of these, and that people and businesses didn't want to take them.
Someone had obviously turned in so many rolls that they ended up at the main office for distribution
Yup, it just never ends.
I started a set of business strike state quarters with the best of intentions, just about completed an album set, I'd buy a bank roll of each and choose the best coin for the folder... then came the territories, then, oh boy, state parks, and what next.
Saving the last few coins i need of the states for later, so i can still be "working on it" without having to try to Keep Up
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
I realize that this is a bit different than the quarters being discussed, but I had collected the presidential dollars in proof, not sure why I started to do this, I guess I thought maybe the kids would find it interesting.
In any case, after keeping the coins piled up for a while in the original mint packaging I finally got around to putting them into a Dansco U.S. Presidential One Dollar Date Set album.
Only once placed in the album did the coins become even remotely interesting, thanks primarily to the quality of the album, which includes images and brief facts on each president.
Charles III Album
Charles III Portrait Set
Charles IV Album
Charles IV Portrait Set
Spanish Colonial Pillar Set
In my opinion, the state quarters were new and interesting like the Bi-Centennial quarter. After 10 years there was no more fascination, especially since I'm sure many collectors had the goal of 50 quarters. Once the mint kept going with U.S. Territories, National Parks, blah, blah, blah.... it was no longer special. It all should've ended with the Hawaii Quarter.
Besides, even with the best of vision, one needs a magnifier to read the writing on some of the most recent quarters to even see what they are about.
What fun is that?
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The BEST investments are the Shell states coins.
even upside down. Grrr...
What I was trying to do before I turned dealer and thus my collection turned into inventory was to and I know many others are quietly doing it now is to ....
Try a 50 state set of Major Error Coins. The first two years are easy, then It gets a lot harder. This is a hard set to get right.
The designs are too cluttered-up.
with the SHQ's, people were really tuned in to ten years, they were ready to stop after 2008. I know back then several did quit buying them and others hung on for the Territories. as TomB says, fatigue got the better of many people becaue they accept it now as a never ending series.
the US Mint should be ashamed of themselves for soaking the public with this program for so long.
While I really liked a number of the designs, too many were butt ugly. I still have many in MS that I collected from pocket change, but I would never pay a premium one.
The state and parks quarters are now the "normal" quarters since they have been around so long. If someone was very young when the series debuted they are now of legal drinking age, never having known a newly minted non-state/parks quarter.
I think a series depicting each states busiest highway at rush hour would be just the ticket. A road with a bunch of nonmoving cars each with tiny people inside staring at mobile phones .
Maybe a road rage incident between angry motorists that you can only see with a loupe ?
The Massachusetts version could show 5 guys leaning on shovels staring at a 6th fixing a tiny pothole while thousands of stranded motorists shake their tiny fists at them.
A number of the ATB quarters are quite attractive. The problem is that the Mint decided that if the state quarters were a good idea, then changing the design five times a year with ANYTHING would be an even BETTER idea.
People a) are overwhelmed to the point of indifference, and b) people increasingly regard coins as obnoxious, value-less change-makers, and don't even look at them any more.
Here's a warning parable for coin collectors...
Sorry, not the mint. The ideas came from the fertile minds of congress.
(PS autocorrect suggested febrile and I almost took it)
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
The 50 states was a well-defined series with an identifiable beginning and end. People were excited to see “their” design. What we’re in now is a never-ending array of one crazy idea after another. States are interesting. Effigy Mounds and obscure battles speak to almost no one. Pretty soon we’ll have first names on quarters sort of like they’re doing with Coke bottles.
I collect most anything numismatic that has to do with Delaware. The second Delawere piece commemorated a bird preserve, which was really a swamp on the Delaware River in the middle of the state. Even I was yawning.
There was also an indirect negative to cash businesses like fast food, etc.
After a while, no one had a CLUE as to what all the possible back sides of quarters looked like, and 47 metric tons of German 1 Mark, French 1 Franc, and the Caribbean nation quarters were dumped on unsuspecting cashiers.
Right size, had something of a design, and in the register they went.
I didn't. I've completed the State Quarter series and I'm proud of it. I still need to upgrade some which I will do in time, I'm sure. I consider the territories as part of the state series although my collection records just list the subject, not the series name.
The big problem with the park quarters is that they are much rarer in circulation. These are more than a few I've never seen in circulation. Of the first two years I think I only found 4 of 10 in circulation. And that's not even counting the two different mints.
Another problem is that some of them are less than inspiring. When I read that Saratoga was going to have one, I was thrilled. (I have spent a lot of time there) Then I saw it...and it was just hands. Those hands conveyed nothing of Saratoga. There are some great ones - my favorite is the flying turkey - but most are not memorable. Let's put it this way...I have not really done much with my collection since 2013...but I remember off the top of my head which state quarter I need to upgrade badly. I do not remember which park quarters are missing. I have it on Excel, sure, but it hasn't stayed in my head for five years when I don't even really think about it. (The state quarter I need to upgrade is Ohio)
Finally, I know a noncollector who saves literally every state quarter she gets. I have no idea why.
Was at an auction on the 1st. Watched $480 worth all mint wrapped go for $500 and I was surprised at that because there is a 13% buyers premium. I started a collection but none of them were scarce or rare. People were buying rolls of each year and mint. It just stopped making sense to collect them.
"A dog breaks your heart only one time and that is when they pass on". Unknown
Beginning with the Territories in 2009, I think a lot of the newly issued quarters were not as available at the local bank level as they were with the statehood quarters. This continued on into at least the first 2-3 years of the parks program. Mintages were much, much lower for the territories and parks.
Jeff
By the ninth year or so of the statehood quarters series people were tired of them, but at least they were close to finishing their sets. Then Congress dumped the DC and Territories coins on them, for which their albums did not have holes, and then Congress hit them with the ATB series and people just said ENOUGH!
...
If we were all the same, the world would be an incredibly boring place.
Tommy
Is it true there was an Earthquake centered at Bombay Hook recently? I find that hard to believe. But then I heard most people in the area knew nothing about it.... that I CAN believe.
From where I stand, the C-5 Crash out near the Dickenson Mansion was a bigger thing than Bombay Hook ever could be.
This is my number one complaint with US coinage in general. Other countries like Canada put out many different beautifully designed coins. By the time a design here goes through all the committees, it's so PC and bland and people ignore it mostly.
They call me "Pack the Ripper"
I think FSQ died because it was just too long a series. 11 years is too long a long time for a country that has the attention span of a cat.
People already didn't care about the FSQ at the end, and the ATB was just an extension (for the most part) of the FSQ. It was even worse that the best ATB sites were already used on the FSQs, so you ended up with things like the Effigy Mounds and Frederick Douglass that no one gave a rat's ass about.
In my nsho, the only good thing that came out of the entire series was the 5oz pucks.
(Full disclosure should state I'm dumping $25 bags of FSQ's into a coinstar, and yes, I'm bitter.
)
Too long is right. We have been suffering with the weak, bland design of the quarter since 1932. The state quarters were just 11 years more of the same with a different reverse and there's no end in sight.
Bland since 1932...... but when they redesigned the obverse in 95 or whatever year they managed to make it worse somehow.
Along with fatigue as TomB mentioned, there was finally the realization that mintages in the hundreds of millions meant the coins would not become "valuable" anytime in the next several generations, and the general public gave up.
I am afraid I threw a lot of cold water on my friends hopes that their kids would have rare coins in 20 years.
Commems and Early Type
I think fatigue as well. I am using them to teach our 8 year old about the states as well as numismatics. I know another father doing the same thing with his daughter.
I remember selling the $25 Delaware bags on eBay for $200.
The general public thinks what they’re led to think, and believe what they’re told . A numismatist, on the other hand...like coin dealers, find better reasons to drink.
(Of course I’m kidding )
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I've completed my states quarters collection from circulation as well. Most of the coins are nice chBU but there are lots of Gems. A few of the last states I was able to find only in AU-58 so I'm still hoping to upgrade.
This area (NW Indiana) has been pretty strong so I've got all the territories quarters but I'm missing lots of the mint marks.
Oddly enough over the years I've seen only six or eight rolls that were nice enough to sock away. One of these was the WY D so I'm doing fairly well. There are a lot of collections and accumulations like mine out there but not many are being actively worked at this time.
There are numerous potentially valuable coins in the series but people aren't paying attention.
TL;DR
Did someone say, "over-saturation" ? Because that.
Insert witicism here. [ xxx ]
I sold an NGC Silver Proof 70 State Quarter Set for $5300 on ebay . I bought the set for $1500 a few years earlier. At one time there was great demand for these sets.
Box of 20
1996 they changed the concavity and "spaghettied" the hair (even more).
I'd like to see new designs as well but there seems little hope of much change.
It should be more interesting than ever to see the make-up of quarters after a few years of a single design. By that time there will be a dozen dates with a very low incidence in circulation.
I think people finally began to realize that most of them would never be worth more than face value.
Is the bottom blob doubled? (how can you not be enthused about collecting things like this?)
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Perhaps it is because rear ends don't grow back?
Once you lose your ass it is gone.............................
In response to the OP question, debit cards.
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To be fair, Iowa didn't have much of a choice. Because of the way the law is worded, it was either Effigy Mounds, or Herbert Hoover's 2-room boyhood home. Seriously, those were the only two possible choices. I've actually been to Effigy Mounds, and the coin is probably the best representation of the site you could do.
Doesn't mean the coin doesn't suck, but places like Iowa was destined to suck no matter what...
Look at Illinois' pitiful only choice.
Too many period. I firmly believe in one design, make it a beautiful, artistic piece, and leave it alone for a few years. Even changing the design every year is too much, never mind every 10 weeks...just because we can. How about changing the design every month? How about on all the coins, not just the quarters. Yikes what a circus that would be.
And what happens an the end of the Parks Quarters? State birds? State flowers? How about featuring State Senators? Now there's a series that might never end!!!