Seniors Start Collecting Coins

Art Arett has a new hobby.

He’s pursuing it mainly for fun. And if he makes a few bucks in the process, so much the better.

“I like to look at the quarters and pick them up. And who knows? Maybe they’ll go way up in value,” he said.

The Moorhead grandfather of four is among the millions of American seniors collecting quarters in the U.S. Mint’s state-themed quarter program.

Launched in 1999, the program annually introduces five new state quarters, the backs of which feature the state name and special design.

By all accounts, the program has been a huge success.

About 2 million Americans collected coins before the state quarter program began, according to a 2001 survey for the Mint.

By 2001, as many as 125 million American adults, many of them seniors, were collecting the state quarters for themselves, their children or their grandchildren, according to the survey by Washington, D.C.-based Peter D. Hart Research.

The popularity of coin collecting remains on the upswing today, in large part to state quarters, said Mark Kingsley, proprietor of Northern Plains Coins in Fargo.

Also contributing to the hobby’s growing popularity is the greater ease of buying and selling coins online and declining interest in collecting baseball cards, he said.

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