It doesn’t look like a best seller. It doesn’t read like a best seller. Truth be told, it’s not even a book, at least, not in the usual sense of the word.
It’s “Statehood Quarters: Collection 1999 to 2001, Number One,” published by Whitman Coin Products, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press. And, really, it’s just a $2.99 folder for holding the first batch of new quarters from the U.S. Mint honoring the 50 states.
But it has become a publishing juggernaut, charging up the nation’s best-seller lists, thanks to one of the oddest cultural phenomena in many a year — the sudden, unprecedented and, to put it mildly, astonishing appetite of Americans for the new 25-cent pieces.
To be sure, “Statehood Quarters” hasn’t elbowed aside “Harry Potter” or John Grisham for the topmost spots on the lists.
But in recent weeks it has been holding its own between Nos. 40 and 50, in company with “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt and “The Cider House Rules” by John Irving, among the top 100 hardcovers and paperbacks sold by Barnes & Noble. And, in early May, “Statehood Quarters” clambered its way up to No. 9 on the list of big-selling paperbacks at more than 300 independent bookstores, according to Book Sense.
“This has been amazing,” says Lisa Senz, who oversees the Whitman imprint for St. Martins. “We had an initial printing of 50,000 of the folder, and now, counting what we have on order, it’s up to 3 million. The first new quarter — Delaware — came out in early ’99, but I don’t think we saw anything start to go crazy until early fall.”
“Crazy” is right.
Normally, the mint produces about 2 billion new quarters annually, but, this year, because of the wildfire popularity of the coins, spokesman Mike White says more than 6 billion will be put into circulation.
Most won’t stay in circulation, however. White says some 4 billion of this year’s quarters — or $1 billion in coins — will be taken out of use by Americans and saved in dresser drawers, coin bags and slotted holders, like the Whitman “Statehood Quarters” folder. (The same thing has been happening with the new gold-colored Sacagawea dollar coin. In the first four months of this year, more than 500 million were put into circulation, and most were taken right out again by Americans who have had more fun holding onto and admiring the novel dollar more than spending it.)
“Our marketing people tell us that 112 million persons are collecting the quarters,” White says. That’s roughly one of every two American men, women and children over the age of 9. “At the mint, we have a mailing list of 1.2 million names,” he says.
At the Collectors Choice coin store in west suburban Hinsdale, owner Ed Randell says, “It’s a big deal. One of every five people who come in here is looking for those [quarter] books. Everybody’s buying them, but, basically, it’s a lot of grandmothers and grandfathers buying for their grandkids — and they’re buying half a dozen at a crack.”
Randell himself isn’t immune to the frenzy. “It’s fun stuff,” he says. “I even gave them to my grandkids.”
At Whitman, Senz says, the huge interest in the new quarters has also resulted in a sharp rise in interest in other coins and in the rest of the company’s collecting products.
“It’s opened the door to coin-collecting in general,” she says. “The sales of our penny folder have increased exponentially too.” Indeed, the company’s sales quadrupled last year and are expected to quadruple again in 2000.
The quarter books are now on sale at Target and K-mart stores, in airports, at supermarkets and drugstores, even in gas stations. And there are dozens of competitors with similar products, some advertising heavily on television.
Two new Whitman products are brightly colored folders geared specifically to children. “Kids are trading these [quarters],” Senz says. “It’s the new Pokemon for kids.”
In fact, Ute Wartenberg, executive director of the New York-based American Numismatic Society, contends that the quarters are better than Pokemon cards or Beanie Babies.
For one thing, she argues that the coins themselves are “much more attractive.” For another, this is a form of collecting that doesn’t cost a participant an arm and a leg. “It’s a fairly American thing, attracting all sorts of people from different classes. Any of us has a chance of finding these.”
Including Wartenberg herself and her staff.
The 142-year-old American Numismatic Society may be the premier American institution for the study and appreciation of coins, the repository of an important numismatic library and a museum with a collection of some of the rarest American coins. But society employees, like so many other people in the U.S., have gotten caught up in the excitement about the lowly quarters.
“It’s kind of a game among the staff,” says Wartenberg. “The problem is: We don’t get the Denver mint coins here. It’s very annoying when you’re trying to complete the set. I have virtually no Denver coins, but I have two Delawares which are worth quite a lot.”
Quite a lot, in this context, can be as much as $9 — which represents a 3,500 percent increase in value for a single 25-cent piece.
The reason for the gargantuan jump in value is that only about 775 million of the Delaware quarters and 707 million of the Pennsylvania quarters were produced by the mint last year. The rarest of the quarters, though — if such a term as “rare” can be used in connection with anything produced in the hundreds of millions — is the New Jersey coin, of which only 662 million were minted.
After New Jersey, the mint learned its lesson, producing 940 million of the Georgia quarters and at least a billion of each of those that have come after: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland and South Carolina.
Normally, the production of so many hundreds of millions of quarters would guarantee that there wouldn’t be much of an increase, if any, in the value of the coins in the collecting community. But, with 112 million Americans collecting the quarters, this isn’t a normal situation by any means.
The Holy Grail for the quarter collectors is a set of 100 coins — 50 produced by the Denver mint and 50 by the Philadelphia mint. And it will take until late 2008, at the earliest, to put together a set.
Each year, under the program, the U.S. mint releases five new state quarters, one after the other. For example, the coin for South Carolina was issued on May 24, and will be the only quarter made at the two mints for a 10-week period.
Then, in August, the mints will stop making those coins and begin producing New Hampshire quarters. Then, around fall, New Hampshire production will be stopped and Virginia quarters will be made.
The order of the quarters is based on the order the states entered the union.
The quarter for Illinois, the 21st state, will be minted in the first months of 2003. The last quarter, issued at the end of 2008, will be for Hawaii.
Some of the simpler coin-collecting products provide space for just one quarter for each state, regardless of mint. But the Whitman “Statehood Quarters” book and many similar holders for the coins have slots for quarters from both mints, and that has caused some frustration among the new horde of collectors.
Denver-minted coins tend to circulate west of the Mississippi River while Pennsylvania coins circulate east of the river, including in Chicago. So, for anyone except frequent travelers, it’s fairly easy to find the coins of one mint and fairly hard to find the ones from the other.
That’s a big reason no one’s sure what’s going to happen to the quarter-collecting craze in the future.
The mint’s quarter program has achieved its goals of boosting an interest in American history and in coin collecting.
And it has become a huge moneymaker, with profits for the mint (and, ultimately, for the U.S. Treasury and the taxpayer) estimated at $6 billion to $8 billion by the end of 2008.
But interest in the coins can’t continue to rise as sharply as it has during the first 17 months of the program. After all, with so many Americans already collecting the quarters, there’s a limit to further growth of the market.
In addition, the frustrations of trying to find coins from both mints and locate the relatively rare early quarters are likely to take their toll on those already collecting. And, of course, fads usually don’t last a full decade.
At some point, will hundreds of thousands — or millions — of the new collectors lose interest and end up dumping the quarters back into circulation, driving the prices among collectors down, down, down?
A goodly number of the collectors say they’re saving the coins as an investment, but Wartenberg and other experts warn not to bank too heavily on a windfall.
“I would doubt [the value of a particular quarter] will go too high because of the sheer numbers of them produced,” Wartenberg says.
Anyone looking for a precedent might consider the series of 12 silver 25-cent pieces, honoring each of Canada’s provinces, that the Canadian mint issued on a month-by-month basis during 1992 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the nation’s confederation.
A complete set of those coins, plus a special dollar coin also issued that year, in proof condition is worth about $50 in Canadian money, according to an Internet posting by the Arctic Coin store in Ottawa.
That’s more than 12 times the face value of coins. But it’s still only $50.
In American money, that comes to about $33.
The U.S. Mint’s state quarters program began in January 1999. Approximately every 10 weeks until 2008, a new state quarter will be issued. Quarters are minted based on the order the states entered the union. The following quarters have already been issued, or will be issued later this year.
Delaware
This quarter honors the historic horseback ride of Caesar Rodney. Despite suffering from can-cer and asthma, Rodney, a delegate to the Continental Congress, in 1776 rode 80 miles to cast the deciding vote in favor of the nation’s independence.
A native of Dover, Rodney held more public offices than any other Delaware citizen.
Pennsylvania
The statue “Commonwealth,” which has topped Pennyslvania’s state capitol dome since 1905, is shown on this quarter.
Designed by Roland Hinton Perry, the statue is a bronze-gilded female form with her right arm extended to represent kindnesss and her left hand holding a rib-bon mace to symbolize justice.
New Jersey
Based on a 1851 painting by Emmanuel Leutze that hangs in the Metro-politan Museum of Art in New York City, this quarter depicts Gen. George Washington and members of the colonial army crossing the Delaware River during the Revolu-tionary War. Washington’s army captured more than 900 prisoners and secured the town of Trenton.
Georgia
This design incorporates several symbols associated with the state:
A peach; an outline of Georgia; oak sprigs, which pay homage to the official state tree, the Live Oak; and the state’s motto, “Wisdom, Justice, Moderation,” gracing a hanging banner.
Connecticut
A majestic white oak tree that saved Connecticut’s charter is featured on this quarter. On Oct. 31, 1687, a British representative of King James II challenged the state’s government structure and demanded the surrender of its charter. Capt. Joseph Wadsworth hid the charter in the massive oak tree, keeping it from falling into British hands. The tree was destroyed during a storm in 1856.
Massachusetts
This quarter honors the Minutemen, small forces of colonists and farmers who were instrumental in de-feating the British during the Revolutionary War.
The design replicates The Minuteman, a statue in the Minuteman National Histor-ical Park in Concord.
Maryland
The image of the dome from the Maryland Statehouse, surrounded by branches from the state tree, the White Oak, and the state’s nickname, The Old Line State, graces this quarter. The state-house dates to 1772 and features the coun-try’s largest wooden dome built without nails. From 1783-84, the state-house seved as the nation’s first peacetime capital. The Treaty of Paris was ratified here, officially ending the Revolutionary War.
South Carolina Figuring prominently on this quarter is the state tree, the Palmetto, the importance of which dates back to the Revolutionary War: In 1776, colonists in a small fort built of Palmetto logs successfully defeated a British fleet trying to capture Char-leston Harbor. Also on the quarter are other key state symbols, the Carolina wren and the state flower, the Yellow Jessamine.
New Hampshire
This quarter show-cases one of the state’s most unusual nat-ural attractions, the Old Man of the Mountain rock formation. Composed of five layers of red granite, the formation looks like an elderly man gazing east and is located on Mt. Cannon in the Franconia Mountains in the northern part of the state.
Virginia
Virginia’s quarter honors Jamestown, the nation’s oldest colony, which will be 400 years old in 2007. The design features three ships, the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery, which carried the first English settlers to Jamestown. The ships left London on Dec. 20, 1606 and landed on a small island along the James River on May 12, 1607.
– To be issued later this year.
Source: U.S. Mint
