Quarter Collecting

My late father and I didn't do that much together, but we had worked diligently on one project from 1999 until his passing in 2009: collecting a full 50 State Quarter Collection, with one P & D Mint coin for each state. We have one of all the P Mint coins, but I'm still missing about 8 D Mint coins to complete our collection.

My father and I truly enjoyed collecting these quarters. On random days he would come home and say "guess what I got?" and then say something like "a D-Iowa" or the name of a quarter we had been missing. He found most of the collection, working in HVAC and being on the road all day stopping at different shops and restaurants, also because I was a minor for many of the collecting years. When I found one to add to the collection, I was very excited to have contributed. The holder we have for the quarters came with a book where you can fill in where you found each quarter. I was able to record the location for some of the quarters, but not all of them as we got the book after we started collecting.

We even bought 100 California Quarters on the US Mint website, 2 for our collection and the rest were to be sold on eBay after the coins were no longer available. My dad frequently referred to California residents as "people living in la la land" and assumed they would pay top dollar for their state's coin. Maybe I will sell the extra eventually.

Today at work a co-worker, who is known for his trickery, brought in the newly redesigned 2010 Penny. No one believed him that it was real until we looked it up on the US Mint's website. While browsing the website, I was reminded that a new quarter collection featuring 56 quarters representing our National Parks began this year. As of right now 3 of the new quarters have been released and I have not seen a single one. I plan on collecting them for my quarter collection I began with my dad, but it is really difficult without his help (and I don't usually pay cash, therefore limiting my chances of receiving change with the lucky quarters). I'm debating on whether or not to purchase them from the website or just hunt for them the old fashioned way. Either way, I have to complete this collection as well as the previous collection for us. After all, a promise is a promise.