Coin Blog

The preliminary mintage for the Yellowstone National Park Quarter has recently been provided by the United States Mint. This is the second coin in the new America the Beautiful Quarters Program.

There were 34.8 million coins produced at the Denver Mint and 33.6 million coins produced at the Philadelphia Mint. This makes the total production across both facilities 68.4 million. The US Mint does caution that this is a preliminary figure. If time and resources allow, the US Mint seems to be able to restart production of coins previous releases as long as it is still the current calendar year.

Interestingly, this amount comes in above the production level for the first release of the year. The Hot Springs Quarter mintage was a combined 59.6 million. This breaks the streak of continually declining quarter mintages that has been in place for more than a year.

Does this signify a change in trend or an aberration? Will Hot Springs be the low mintage coin for the series?

In the last month, the United States Mint has produced the first circulation strike 2010 Jefferson Nickels at the Denver Mint.

The first Philadelphia strike coins came in April 2010, when a scant 1.68 million were produced. At the time, it appeared that there might be a chance of coming in below the extremely low production totals experienced for the 2009 Jefferson Nickels. However, now it seems relatively certain that the low levels of the prior year will be surpassed.

Through June 30, 2010, the US Mint has now produced 76.08 million of the 2010-P Jefferson Nickels. This is already above last year's total annual production of 39.84 million.

At Denver, production has been 36.24 million so far. This entire amount was minted in June. The prior year total remains slightly higher at 46.8 million coins.

Both 2010-P and 2010-D nickels have already been reported in the channels of circulation.