Washington America the Beautiful Quarters
Jaime Hernandez: The America the Beautiful Quarters Program was first introduced in 2010 to honor 56 different national parks and national sites from each state, including the District of Columbia, the U.S. Territories: Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, United States Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The America the Beautiful Quarters Program will be completed in 2021. Five new reverse designs honoring national parks and national sites will be issued every year until the program ends. The obverse of the America the Beautiful Quarters depicts the same George Washington motif used on Washington Quarters since 1932. Over the years, however, slight modifications have been made to the design, yet it still remains almost identical to the one used in 1932.
The Washington Quarter design has always been extremely popular amongst collectors. Let’s not forget about the extremely popular Washington States Quarters Program, where the United States Mint estimates that over 147 million collectors were involved in collecting the State Quarters.
After the State Quarters Program ended in 2008, the Mint continued with a similar program entitled “Washington D.C. and U.S. Territories Quarters,” these however, were only issued in 2009.
As mentioned earlier, the America the Beautiful Quarters were then introduced in 2010. Since then, the program has also proved to be very popular amongst collectors and the public. The Mint also produced oversized versions of the America the Beautiful Quarters, each one composed of 5 ounces of pure silver, thereby attracting a new breed of collectors.
The United States Mint was very successful with the creation of the America the Beautiful Quarters program and hopefully, it will continue to produce wonderful programs, such as these, to attract new collectors and to continue to make coin collecting much more fun and even more popular.