Friday, June 05, 2009

Missing Quarters

The state quarters program began back when my wife and I lived in New York state.

Inspired by a great children's book, The Hundred Penny Box, I decided to start collecting one quarter for each year and state, looking forwards to the days when my own children would be old enough to care.

My grandmother once gave me a cute cigarette case: an ancient, yellow-green, heavy, steel turtle. Two rows of quarters fit nicely inside it.

When we moved to Oregon we unpacked that turtle, still partially full of quarters. Ever since, it has sat high on a kitchen shelf, unused.

Yesterday Smiley was quite content to eat and play with a stick of string cheese for ten minutes. I was really tired, and unsure what to do. So I took down that turtle and sorted its quarters as well as the other quarters we had in the house. Last night I finished by looking through the quarters we keep in the car to feed parking meters.

Currently the turtle has a quarter for each year from 1965 through 1998, and most of the fifty states. So I should keep an eye out for pre-1965 quarters and quarters for these states:
Oklahoma (Only one state left!)
The next quarters will feature national parks.

I'll update this blog post as we finish our collection.

UPDATE: Looking at my quarters, I've found out the "state" quarters also include Guam and District of Columbia.

1 comment:

Heather said...

We have several of those around, I believe. If you don't find them let me know and I will send them along.