Publisher’s Column
by Dennis Tucker

Celebrating America’s Beautiful National Parks Through Coins

Coins have been around for nearly 3,000 years, making coin collecting one of the oldest hobbies in the world. Today, there are millions of coin collectors (some passionate, some casual) in the United States. Many of them started in the hobby by collecting state quarters struck by the U.S. Mint from 1999 to 2008, and then the District of Columbia and U.S. Territories quarters struck in 2009.

Starting in 2010 and through 2021, Americans will enjoy a new coinage program—one that honors national parks and sites in each of the fifty states, plus our five territories and the District of Columbia.

This exciting new quarter-dollar series promises to be as popular as the state quarters program that introduced millions of Americans to the joys of coin collecting.

Across the country, interest in our national parks is on the rise. The National Park Service announced that in the first six months of 2009, our parks had 4.5 million more visits than in the same period the year before. More Americans are choosing to use vacations and long weekends to visit parks in their home states (and beyond). . . PBS has broadcast a six-episode documentary, by world-famous filmmaker Ken Burns, called “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”. . . and President Barack Obama and the first family visited Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon specifically to draw attention to the national parks system.

Whitman Publishing is here for the collector of National Park quarters. Over the next few weeks we’ll introduce many new storage and display ideas—from our classic blue folders and albums to snaplock cases and colorful foamboard maps. We also have two fascinating books coming out soon: America’s Beautiful National Parks: A Handbook for Collecting the New National Park Quarters (by Aaron J. McKeon, with a foreword by Kenneth Bressett), and Adventure Across the National Parks: Collecting National Park Quarters and Other Coins (with a foreword by McKeon and an introduction by Q. David Bowers).

Breathtaking national parks, and an important new coinage series—two fascinating ways to learn about our great nation. Stay tuned to this web site, and watch for our ads in Coin World and other hobby publications, as Whitman rolls out new products for your coin collection.

Coins of the Month: National Park Commemoratives

In recent years, several commemorative coins have highlighted American national parks. In 1991 the 50th anniversary of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial was commemorated on three coins. Surcharges from their sale were divided between the Treasury Department and the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society of Black Hills, South Dakota. The money helped finance restoration work on this famous national landmark. Pictured here is the silver dollar in that series (which also included a copper-nickel half dollar and a gold $5 coin). The dollar was designed by Marika Somogyi. It shows the traditional portraits of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, as sculpted on the mountain by Gutzon Borglum (who earlier had modeled the figures shown on the Stone Mountain commemorative half dollar). The reverse, designed by former Mint chief sculptor-engraver Frank Gasparro, features a small outline map of the United States with the Great Seal above.

In 1999 a silver dollar was struck to recognize Yellowstone National Park, which had celebrated its 125th anniversary in 1997. The obverse shows one of the park’s many geysers in full steam. It was designed by Mint staffer Edgar Z. Steever IV.

The reverse shows a bison standing in front of a mountain range with the sun resplendent in the background. William C. Cousins, of the U.S. Mint, adapted the design from the seal of the Department of the Interior.

Have any other commemorative coins been struck for our national parks? You can find out in the Guide Book of United States Commemorative Coins by Q. David Bowers.

The Grand Canyon appears on Arizona’s state quarter (2008), and Mount Rushmore is featured on South Dakota’s (2006). The Yosemite Valley, and the famous naturalist who helped protect it, John Muir, are the theme of California’s state quarter (2005). Although they were struck for circulation and not purely as collectibles, these are “commemorative” coins in the sense that they honor significant people, places, and things. The Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, and the Yosemite Valley are among the 50 slices of Americana served up in the state quarter program; you can see them and learn more in the Guide Book of Washington and State Quarters, also by Q. David Bowers.

Book of the Month:

No president has had as much influence on our national parks as Theodore Roosevelt, an active outdoorsman who appreciated and valued America’s natural resources and landmarks. Roosevelt was also influential in transforming our nation’s money in the early 1900s, in what many historians call a renaissance of American coinage. In 1905 Roosevelt challenged the brilliant and famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The United States is the best nation on Earth, but its coins are atrociously hideous. Why can we not produce coinage as beautiful as that of the ancient Greeks?

In Striking Change: The Great Artistic Collaboration of Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, award-winning author Mike Moran offers a fresh new look at the life of Saint-Gaudens—the man and the artist—and the remarkable partnership he forged with Theodore Roosevelt to reinvigorate the country’s numismatic art. Moran explores Saint-Gaudens’s coin designs in the context of his monumental sculptures and American culture of the time.Through first-person accounts, behind-the-scenes conversations, and explosive public drama, we come to know the larger-than-life personalities involved in this renaissance of fine art. Striking Change illuminates the politics, the genius, the struggles, and ultimately the triumph of an extraordinary American journey.

Products of the Month:


National Park Quarters Foam Collector Map. Ships November 24, 2009. Display your quarter collection in this educational Collector Map. Special “push-fit” foam makes it easy to insert your coins, with openings for all 56 National Park quarters. Its large 13.2" x 39.75" foamboard construction is inert and safe for your coins.

     Browse our catalog for more storage and display ideas for your National Park quarters collection.