American Samoa nips Guam for quarter title

After traveling most of the day yesterday to get to the site of the American Numismatic Association convention in Los Angeles, what do I find myself doing? Sitting at the computer and looking at the Mint Web site to see what the production numbers were for the month of July.

I hardly needed to get out of bed to do this, let alone travel on a continental scale.

But since I am looking at the numbers, I can say that the American Samoa quarter, which just became available for sale on the Mint’s Web site and through the banking system has narrowly beaten the Guam quarter as the scarcest design in 2009. Only 39,600,000 Denver American Samoa quarters have been struck. Add 42,600,000 Philadelphia American Samoa quarters and you get a grand total for the design of 82,200,000. That is less than Guam’s combined total of 87,600,000 by 5,400,000 pieces.

The Denver American Samoa quarter is now the scarcest of the 2009 quarters while the Philadelphia version ties with the Denver Guam for the title of second scarcest.

Denver continues producing more nickels as it did in June. In July another 6,960,000 were cranked out while the nickel presses remained idle in Philadelphia. That brings the total to 46,800,000 this year compared to Philadelphia’s 39,840,000.

No dimes were struck at either mint in July.

There were only 13,000,000 quarters struck in Denver while Philadelphia produced none.

Philadelphia also hardly cranked up the dollar presses with an output of just 1,960,000 Presidential coins in July compared to 27,440,000 for Denver.

However, just when you think there might be a pattern here, the P-mint struck 141,600,000 cents to Denver’s 120,400,000.

Half dollars and Golden dollars saw no additional coins produced.

Now perhaps I can go hunt for the ANA convention.