DC quarter mintage drops sharply

Mintages of 2009 District of Columbia quarters fell even further than was at first speculated from the February mintage report in last week’s paper.

Only 172,400,000 pieces were struck, according to final mintage figures provided by the U.S. Mint.

This total is divided almost in half between the Philadelphia and Denver Mints.

Philadelphia struck 83,600,000 coins and Denver produced 88,800,000.

Even lower is the final mintage figure for the Puerto Rican quarter, which is the second of six designs to be released in 2009.

The combined output of Philadelphia and Denver is just 139,000,000 pieces, but rather than being divided evenly, with this design, Philadelphia significantly lagged the Denver output with just 53,000,000 quarters being produced. Denver, on the other hand, struck 86,000,000 Puerto Rico quarters.

Both of these designs have mintage totals drastically less than the totals for the scarcest state quarters.

The Denver output for the 2008 Oklahoma quarter was 194,600,000, which is almost four times the number of Philadelphia Puerto Rico quarters.

For additional comparisons, consider the Philadelphia output for the 2004 Iowa quarter was 213,800,000 pieces. The P-mint 2002 Ohio output was 217,400,000 coins and the P-Mint Maine output in 2003 was 217,400,000.

With a production trendline like this, collectors will have to pay attention to the rest of the six-coin Territories quarter series.