The Equilibrium Project (ongoing)

[Cerulean]

Being a Virginian, the large majority of post-2002 coins I see are from the Philadelphia Mint. This is reasonable considering how close I am to the Philly Mint. I imagine that my West Coast colleagues find the opposite to be true, a large majority of Denver minted coins.

These trends must vary from location to location. Thus, for a given part of the country there must be a commonly seen ratio of P vs. D minted new coins. By extension, there must be a few places in the US where that ratio of encountered coins is near 50/50, equilibrium. I want to know where that occurs.

I want to make a map of where new coins hit circulation from each mint, Philly and Denver. To do that, I'll need your help gathering data points. Please look at your coins from circulation, disregarding all coins made before 2003, then report here your percentages P vs. D minted coins.

EDIT: Because they don't circulate normally like regular coins, dollars and halves will have more anomalies in their distribution. Please focus on quarters and smaller coins.

 

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[DrDetector]

I think the Mississippi River is the general division line. However that isn't set in stone, for instance when the North Dakota quarter came out we got all new D mint coins in Pittsburgh. That was the only time I've seen new D mint coins get delivered here though.

 

[TxTim]

In Houston, post 2003's the D's outnumber P's by 10 to 1 or more.
We get dumped on with new D's as soon as they mint them.

 

[XX]

In Chicago, you will primarily find new D's issued first, BUT

in some rare instances, P's will get distributed first such as the recent Utah Quarter
AND
in some instances, they will exhaust the D supply and issue P's also. I've seen this with Pennies, Nickels and Dimes, but haver rarely seen it with Quarters and Dollars.

 

[Immy]

Does the Mint list their distribution patterns on their site, as in, which FRBs get coin from which Mint? Might save a lot of time figuring this out.

 

[GMan00001]

In Minnesota its strongly tilted toward the west with Denver coming in most frequently for most issues. That being said however, the distribution patterns occasionally bring large amounts of P minted coins into the area too. For example, 2000-P half dollars are all over while 2000-D are hard to find. Or a couple of years ago I could find all I wanted of a the Philly minted nickel, but had trouble with the Denver one (at least in unc rolls). Just depends on where the need is. So I suspect it varies a bit year to year. If I were to guess the dividing line is around the edge of the Minneapolis/Chicago Fed Reserve District boundary in the midwest. Cannot speak about the south knowingly.

 

[Fropa]

I'm not sure exactly where the P/D line would be. I'm in Wisconsin so East of the Mississippi and we get predominately D coins here when the new coins come out. 2007 was the first year I didn't find a single P minted state quarter the entire year, I'm still missing 3 of the 2007-P quarters. Every year before 2007 I was eventually able to find both P and D quarters, but always the D first.