Collector interest up for ‘S’ quarters

One of the interesting aspect of writing a daily online blog is that I occasionally hit upon a topic that surprises me by the response to it. With online postings, it is possible to monitor the number of people who read a blog. Naturally, the higher the number, the better.

Our online people not that long ago advised me that any time I wrote about silver, the numbers soared. That’s good. The downside is they would have been happy for me to write about silver every single day of the week.

Naturally, I protested that if I wrote about nothing but silver (and, of course, gold) it would not longer be a blog about coins.

The most complete and comprehensive color guide to all circulating and non-circulating U.S. coins.

There is no danger I am going to throw over my day job in the coin field to write a daily blog as if I were a bullion expert.

I have got some numbers now that show that collectors are awakening to collector topics again. That’s a good thing for all us except those who want to acquire wealth rapidly via the bullion market.

I posted a blog in the past week about San Francisco Mint uncirculated quarters. These have been available by the roll and bag from the U.S. Mint since last June. I was excited by the development. I wrote about it often, even helpfully adding up the roll and bag numbers to arrive at a total “S” quarter mintage for each design.

I hoped this information was useful. I hoped it was interesting. But once last year’s quarters went off sale, I stopped doing it. Then I wrote a blog titled, “Are ‘S’ quarter mintages really that low?”

The topic was chosen for me because shortly before I had a phone call from a collector who had just realized that the “S” quarters were out there and they had mintages of less than 2 million each. He thought those numbers were low. He wondered what I thought. I loved hearing the enthusiasm in his voice.

I observed in my blog that I expected the long established pattern of second year issues to have a lower mintages than the first year issues as the novelty value wears off. Hardly an hour after I posted my comments I received a phone call from someone who inquired if he understood me correctly and whether I really meant what I wrote about likely lower mintages. I said I did.

Combine the two calls with a couple of emails along similar lines and I figure that this has become a hot topic along the lines of 2012 proof sets.

Here are the mintages for the “S” 2012 quarters:

El Yunque National Forest, 1,679,240
Chaco Culture, 1,389,020
Acadia National Park, 1,409,120
Hawai’i Volcanoes, 1,407,520
Denali National Park, 1,408,320

Other than the El Yunque, the first design offered, they fall in a very tight range.

I mentioned in my blog that mintages might slide below 1 million by the fifth design of 2013. So far we just have the White Mountain National Forest quarter to go by at 867,460, but it is still being sold. I am comfortable with my forecast and delighted that collectors care.