District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty announced Thursday the winning Washington, D.C. quarter design featuring historical jazz legend, Duke Ellington. The Mayor officially communicated the selection to United States Mint Director Edmund Moy.

On May 23, D.C. residents were given three quarter design concepts and asked to vote for their favorite. Public voting ended Wednesday, June 18. Over the four week voting period, 6,089 District residents cast online, mail or telephone votes.

The voting was close across each, but the winning quarter design of Ellington won by 3 percentage points.

Read the rest of this entry »

Artist renderings of three District of Columbia commemorative quarter designs have been prepared by the United States Mint and sent back to D.C. for review. Now the public is being asked to vote for their favorite and help select the final quarter theme.

The winning design will be recommended to the U.S. Mint, and issued next year as part of the District of Columbia and United States Territories Circulating Quarter Dollar Program.

With the conclusion of the successful 50 State Quarters® Program in 2008, the quarter “baton” has passed hands from the states and moved to honor the District of Columbia and U.S. Territories with their six new quarters in 2009.

The hand off was on the rocky side initially for DC. On February 27, the United States Mint rejected their original design concepts because of the included phrase “Taxation Without Representation.” It was considered by the Mint too political and too controversial. DC officials shook the rejection off and they quickly submitted revisions the following day. The design process glided forward.

Read the rest of this entry »

A blazing fast turnaround is not what you expect from the government, but that is exactly what the District of Columbia received.

D.C. city officials forwarded three commemorative quarter design proposals on Monday and on Wednesday, less than two full days later, the U.S. Mint promptly rejected them.

Read the rest of this entry »

2009 will see six new quarter-dollar coins in the District of Columbia and United States Territories Circulating Quarter Dollar Program. Development of the coin designs are already in motion. And with that, it would appear to some that the District of Columbia would like to rock the boat or at least shake it a little.

On Monday, the District of Columbia forwarded three coin design proposals to the United States Mint. While each were unique, all three had at least one thing in common - the words “Taxation Without Representation.”

Read the rest of this entry »

All good things come to an end. The 50 State Quarters® Program is near that end. Or, is it?

Next year all 50 states will have been commemorated and, by law, the state quarters series will close down.

However, there’s legislation that has passed the House and is already in the Senate’s hands to change that.

Read the rest of this entry »