Do Mint Policies Hinder Numismatic Interest?
Heller asks, “Are the U.S. Mint policies discouraging collectors and impacting the future of numismatics?”
For both a community service event and to help promote public interest in numismatics, the company I used to own and where I still work has conducted “Food Raisers” for our local Food Bank four times. We invited people to bring food or cash donations to our store, where we would give them new coin releases.
We first did this in 1999, with the debut of the Delaware Statehood Quarter, then in 2004 for the Michigan Statehood Quarter. We repeated the process with the first of the America the Beautiful™ Quarters in 2010 for Hot Springs National Park and again in 2018 for the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Quarter.
These were coins that were put into circulation, where we were able to obtain quick supplies to give away. For the 2004 Michigan Statehood and the 2018 Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Quarters, we were able to obtain our initial supply from the bank that participated in the public release ceremonies on the very day they were first distributed to the public.
Each time, we raised several thousands of dollars and multiple tons of food for the food bank. Although it involved some work, both the donors and our staff enjoyed these events. Michigan’s first U.S. coin designer, Steven M. Bieda (reverse of the 1992 Olympic Half Dollar), honored us by making the first ceremonial donation of each campaign.
The Statehood Quarter series proved phenomenally popular with the general public. At one point, the U.S. Mint issued a news release saying that about one hundred million people were collecting these coins. So many coins were pulled out of circulation that the U.S. Mint’s profits, which are returned to the U.S. Treasury, increased by hundreds of millions of dollars.
As our store is located in Michigan, we attempted to repeat this event when the first of the American Women Quarters was issued to honor Maya Angelou in 2022. Emily S. Damstra, who attended school in Michigan and obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan, designed the reverse of this coin. We were trying to entice her to make the ceremonial first donation of this Food-Raiser.
However, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank had a massive stockpile of quarters turned back into banks during the pandemic that they needed to put back into circulation. Consequently, no banks near us obtained any new quarters for us to acquire. Even our efforts to have supplies shipped in from other parts of the country struck out. Unable to conduct another event to attract the general public to numismatics, we made a company cash donation to the local food bank.
The American Innovation Dollar for Michigan will be released next spring. At our company, we recently discussed the possibility of conducting a Food-Raiser again for the local food bank, where we would give these coins to those bringing donations to our store. The coin’s design has not yet been publicly revealed, but it will honor the moving automotive assembly line.
Right now, we don’t think such an event would work. The main obstacle is that the U.S. Mint is not putting American Innovation Dollars into circulation. They can only be obtained by ordering them from the U.S. Mint by paying a price above face value. Consequently, the general public is essentially not even aware of the existence of these coins—and, therefore, has no interest in owning them. No one will be able to go to their bank or credit union to pick up some rolls to set aside.
As a result, the U.S. Mint’s potential profits from this coin series are far lower than they would be if the public clamored to acquire coins that they keep rather than spend. This also reduces potential public interest in coming to our store to donate to our local food bank. This also means there will be fewer new numismatic collectors than would otherwise occur.
By the way, almost every state other than Mississippi campaigned to seek public input on potential designs for their respective Statehood Quarters. This process also increased public interest in the coins and contributed to the series' popularity. However, this process resulted in more work for the U.S. Mint and state government employees. Therefore, subsequent Quarter and American Innovation Dollar designs were not created with public input.
I suspect that the public's interest in participating in possible coin designs could have created enough additional interest in owning the resulting coins to cover these extra costs. Is there still time for the public to get involved with the commemorative designs of the forthcoming 2027-2030 quarters and half dollars?
Last week’s numismatic trivia question.
Last week, I asked— Which U.S. coin depicts the continent of South America? The 1923-S Monroe Doctrine Centennial Half Dollar commemorative on the reverse depicts two females posed to look like the Western Hemisphere, one as North America and one as South America.
This week’s trivia question
Here are this week’s questions. Including the United States dollar, how many different dollars are used around the world as current circulating currencies? Come back next week for the answer.
You may also like:
