An American Women Set: Clad Quarters in Tribute
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Updated:
4/27/2026
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The image of the poster is a happy coincidence. The ribbon with the Rank 1 covers the word "It" on the poster. As it is presented the caption is "We Can Do Rank 1" was not intended, it just happened thanks to NGC's program for this site. So I wasn't being prideful contrary to the adjective describing my Numismatic Foraging.
She wasn't famous, she wasn't wealthy, she didn't win Nobel prizes, nor did she get elected to high office. This image is of a woman who worked in the war plants during World War II, raised a family, and kept a household together while her husband was off fighting World War II. Then this was a propaganda poster, and it was effective -- even this Baby Boomer admired her. When her husband came back, Rosie lost her job and went back to her housekeeping and mothering full time, and sometimes not voluntarily.
My wife had this poster on the wall in her office for the thirty years she taught economics and statistics. She had it there because she felt it was an encouragement to women who weren't supposed to be good in mathematics or economics -- and many were very good at both! In fact, I seriously thought about putting my wife's image there instead of Rosie. She typilifies the best of what we can expect from a person, and she's quite accomplished in her own right, but I'd have a lot more explaining to do, and besides I'm terribly biased (as I should be). Besides there's already a picture of her in one of these sets standing in front of Diego Rivera's mural in the Detroit Art Institute.
Congress enacted Public Law 116-330 enabling and requiring a series of coins recognizing the contributions of American Women in our history. The Congress required consultation with institutions steeped in that history to assure that a good cross section of American women important to our development as a nation were included in the series.
It is a good thing to have these coins as a tribute to these women, singers, Indian Chiefs, athletes, First Ladies, astronauts, lawyers, doctors and Medal of Honor winners -- represented in this group is about anything a person can achieve. God bless them all, the long and the short and the tall -- as the old Commonwealth tune from World War II goes.
Many of these women are houehold names, but the majority are not. I relish these sorts of sets because I get to learn something and tell a story about the coin, and why it bears a particular image. On top of that, I watched Universities, my own included, struggle with American history. Women, indigenous folks and people of color are not typically the writers of U.S. history, and too often those groups don't receive their just space in the text books, hence we start whole programs to correct the exclusion. I would prefer that our history was all inclusive, and more accurate. It might look a little different than most now image. This set is just plugging one of the holes in that history.
This set is the cheaper way to go. These same proof coins were also available in silver, but I chose clad, because that's the way our coinage has gone. It just seemed the right thing to do, silver isn't what is circulating, and just like Rosie, the silver got displaced too.
This set is also the ultimate historical dimension of numismatics. These women are all important historic figures, and I got to learn quite a bit by doing the comments for each of these coins. For that I thank each and everyone of these ladies.
The silver versions of these coins are still there, and perhaps a set of those coins might be in order some day. That way I could learn a little something about the designers of each of those coins' reverses too.
The obverse of this coin has an interesting history. The Washington head design of the coin was the brainchild of Laura Gardin Fraser in 1931. This design finished second in the vetting for the Washington Quarter to replace the standing Liberty Quarter, and was revived for this set of coins. This obverse is used for all twenty of the American Women Quarters, both clad (here) and silver. It is only fitting that a woman's design for the obverse be used for this project. Even so, there are just a handfull of women designers whose work consists of more than one of the coins in this series. Emily Damstra, Elana Hagler, and Phebe Hemphill appear several times in the comments for individual coins in this series.
As you will see as you read the comments for each of the coins, women are well represented among the designers of the reverses for these coins (eleven of the twenty). The many of sculptors upon which those designs are based are also women (eight of the twenty). As it turns out, that is fitting. Women had a hard time breaking out of the sterotypical idea that coin designer ought to be men. Frankly, I think this set is, in many ways, a monument to those women who did break out and made our numismatic arts that much richer!
As of this writing this is the only set aong the eighty plus sets in my collection that consists only of "top pop" coins. I also believe this set is the one of which my wife most approves. I began this set with the 2024 coins on March 16, 2026.
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