The new quarter commemorating the District of Columbia went into release this week. It’s good to see one of America’s most outstanding composers honored. In spite of the cut-off piano, I like this design.
Representative Mike Castle of Delaware has sponsored follow-up legislation that will keep special quarters rolling out of Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco for the next twelve years.
National Park Quarters will keep the new designs coming to complement the first president on our 25-cent pieces.
While I like many of these designs, and I applaud the State Quarter program, I do think these efforts dodge the need to redesign coinage. I’d rather have all the circulating coins redesigned and save the special series for collectors’ items. It’s time to give the special series a rest.
29 January 2009 at 6:32 am
Most of the state quarter designs have been banal at best, cheesy at worst (Wisconsin, aptly enough, takes the cheesecake in that regard).
My props for the best of the series:
1. Mississippi
2. Connecticut
3. Oklahoma
4. North Dakota
5. New Jersey
Of the more modernistic, “dynamic” designs, Nevada’s was the best executed.
Had Massachusetts not fumbled its chance, its beautiful Old Ironsides design would have ranked.
The five worst (this was hard to sift, there were so many competitors):
50. Wisconsin
49. Tennessee
48. Missouri
47. Iowa
46. Ohio (though others were pretty much tied with this)