The 50 State Quarters Program was 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 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.
The 50 State quarters were released by the United States Mint every ten weeks, or five each year. They were released in the same order that the states ratified the Constitution or were admitted to the Union. Each quarter's reverse commemorated one of the 50 states with a design emblematic of its unique history, traditions, and symbols. Certain design elements, such as state flags, images of living persons, and head-and-shoulder images of deceased persons were prohibited.
The authorizing legislation and Mint procedures gave each state a substantial role and considerable discretion in determining the design that would represent their state. The majority of states followed a process by which the governor solicited the state's citizens to submit design concepts and appointed an advisory group to oversee the process. Governors submitted three to five finalist design concepts to the Secretary of the Treasury for approval. Approved designs were returned to the states for selection of a final design.
States usually employed one of two approaches in making this selection. In 33 states, the governor selected the final recommended design, often based on the recommendations of advisory groups and citizens. In the other 17 states, citizens selected the final design through online, telephone, mail, or other public votes. US Mint engravers applied all final design concepts approved by the Treasury Secretary. The media and public attention surrounding this process and the release of each state's quarter was intense and produced significant publicity for the program.
The 50 State Quarters Program was the most popular commemorative coin program in United States history; the United States Mint has estimated that 147 million Americans have collected state quarters and 3.5 million participated in the selection of state quarter designs.