New coin production figures from the United States Mint became available this week and they offer mintages for the Shenandoah Quarter, the second of five National Park Quarters for 2014.
Mintages are mostly followed by collectors as they like to collect coins with lower numbers since they tend to become more valuable over time. In that sense, Shenandoah National Park Quarters disappoint, though their mintages are much lower than quarters from years ago with some of them having totals of more than a billion.
Quarters for commerce, and other U.S. coinage denominations for that matter, are made in circulating quality from either the U.S. Mint facility in Denver or from the U.S. Mint facility in Philadelphia. If you look at quarters closely, you can tell where they came from because their obverse or heads side will have a mint mark of ‘D’ of ‘P’.
Mintages for Virginia’s Shenandoah Smoky Mountains National Park Quarter total 197.8 million from Denver and 112.8 million from Philadelphia for a combined 310.6 million. The only other quarter from the America the Beautiful series with a higher total is last year’s Mount Rushmore National Memorial Quarter for South Dakota at 504.2 million. (See mintages by quarter location. This page is always kept up to date.)
The Shenandoah National Park Quarter, released into circulation on March 31, 2014 and also sold in U.S. Mint rolls and bags on the same day, is the 22nd issued in the America the Beautiful Quarters® series. Launching earlier this year was the quarter commemorating Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee which has a mintage total of 172.6 million.
Three more quarters are due out in 2014. Mintages tend to go up with each following release in a year, with the very last one the highest. Upcoming 2014 quarters include those celebrating Arches National Park in Utah, Great Sands Dune National Park in Colorado and Everglades National Park in Florida.