50 State quarters
series of US coins
The 50 State quarters (authorized by Pub. L. 105–124 (text) (PDF), 111 Stat. 2534, enacted December 1, 1997) were a series of circulating commemorative quarters released by the United States Mint. Minted from 1999 through 2008, they featured unique designs for each of the 50 US states on the reverse.
The 50 State Quarters Program was started to support a new generation of coin collectors, and it became the most successful numismatic program in US history, with roughly half of the US population collecting the coins, either in a casual manner or as a serious pursuit. The US federal government so far has made additional profits of $3 billion from collectors taking the coins out of circulation.
In 2009, the US Mint began issuing quarters under the 2009 District of Columbia and US Territories Program. The Territories Quarter Program was authorized by the passage of a newer legislative act, H.R. 2764. This program features the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the United States Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Origins
The 50 State Quarters program was initially inspired by a 1992 Royal Canadian Mint program, "Canada 125", marking the 125th anniversary of the country's Confederation with a series of commemorative 25-cent pieces representing each of its 12 (at the time) provinces and territories.
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This entry incorporates text from “50 State quarters” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.