Blogtrek

Virginia D

One of the most interesting aspects of the past few years has been the design change in the US quarter dollar. Instead of a drab face and eagle, the coins each would honor a state in the USA. There would be 50 such quarter designs, or 5 per year for 10 years. I first got interested in this about the beginning of 2000 and have been eagerly awaiting the coming of each new coin. The next one is Louisiana, which comes out at the end of the month. But the big event of the day was the Virginia D. The Virginia quarter came out in late 2000; it came out early, and huge numbers of these coins appeared; they became almost as common as eagles, it seems. However, every single one of these coins had a P on the face side of the coin, indicating that it was made at the Philadelphia mint. I had seen lots of Virginia Ps, but absolutely no Virginias made at the Denver mint; those have a D on them. Today, when I went to the cafeteria where I worked and bought an orange juice, I got as change a Virginia D quarter. Finally, after a year and a half, I have one. Now the coin I am looking for is Ohio P; their production got disrupted by a closing of the Philadelphia mint for safety reasons; I already have two Ohio D's. I expect to be hunting for these coins until early 2009, when I will encounter the first Hawaii quarter. I think this is a welcome change to our currency designs and would like to see pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollar coins go through similar changes; e.g., Presidents for dimes, monuments for nickels and so forth. And it has also got me interested in something I have never been interested before - collecting coins.