On Wednesday, the US Mint announced the America the Beautiful Quarter Series, a 56 quarter series to “honor” national parks in the 50 states, District of Columbia, and territories. As part of the announcement, the US Mint announced the schedule of the national parks and historic areas that will be depicted.

According to the US Mint, a “restored” version of the 1932 portrait of George Washington designed by John Flanagan. Either this could mean that the Mint engravers will either fix the “spaghetti hair” portrait of the 50 State Quarters or change it to resemble linguini.

Pardon me if I fail to show excitement.

We just finished the State Quarters program and had the DC and Territories Quarters added to the end. This year we celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and the century anniversary of the Lincoln Cent. The Presidential $1 Coin series is in the middle of some of the dullest presidents in US history. And we cannot forget the Native American $1 Coin that probably has the best reverse design of all 2009 coins. Including the circulating coins without rotating reverses the total is 18 different coins being struck this year.

I agree with Mike Zielinski when he wrote on the Coin Update blog:

Although I did enjoy the 50 State Quarters series, I think reusing the same concept over and over again becomes dull. With no disrespect to the sites selected for the impending quarter series, I would rather see a single design that could become an iconic and lasting symbol of our generation [rather] than another collection of 56 designs representing 56 different things.

Let’s think of these quarters as a stimulus package for the collecting suppliers who will sell new folder and albums to house the coins in this series.

Below is the B-roll provided by the US Mint. Starting around 2:23 of the clip are scenes from within one of the branch mints showing the production of quarters.

Labels: quarter, US Mint