The U.S. Mint has produced a whopping 33,774,200,000 state quarters since the inception of the 50 State Quarters® Program in 1999. The total does not include the several hundred million Arizona state quarters that started to hit circulation in June. And by the program’s completion with the final Hawaiian commemorative later this year, the Mint will have issued well over 34 billion state quarters.

That’s quite impressive, despite a slowing U.S. circulating coin pace. And in reality, the Mint’s quarter production output is many millions higher.

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U.S. Mint circulating coin production is down across the board based on a current pace that should see about 10.1 billion coins minted in 2008. That compares to 14.4 billion coins issued in 2007 and over 15 billion in years 2006 and 2005. In fact, at the current rate, 2008 coin output will end at its lowest level in at least the last ten years.

The Mint’s first release of production figures for 2008 reported 3.2 billion coins struck through April. The newest figures indicated 6.7 billion coins were minted through August, or about 842 million coins on average per month. The comparison charts shown below provide the best visual evidence of the declines at both Mint facilities in Denver and Philadelphia.

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Circulating US coins are produced by the United Sates Mint facilities in Denver and Philadelphia. Most everyone is familiar with the "P" and "D" mintmarks on daily pocket change. Those are simply letter indicators for where the coins were minted, Denver or Philadelphia.

But did you know what location is responsible for minting the most coins? Or, whether the Mint is producing less or more circulating change these days?

For the first question, a quick assumption could be that Denver and Philadelphia mint circulating coins at an even rate. That is not always so.

For the second question, although the Mint issues billions of coins each year at an absolutely amazing rate, the demand for them has been falling by billions and billions compared to the late 90s and early 2000s.

While the population is increasing, transactions through plastic — credit cards and the like — are as well.

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