Sales Ending for D.C. & U.S. Territories First Day Coin Covers

Next week on June 30, 2010 at 5:00 PM ET, the United States Mint will conclude sales of the 2009 District of Columbia & U.S. Territory Quarters First Day Coin Covers.

All six of the covers are still available for sale currently, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Each cover is priced at $14.95 each.

These products may be worth a look since they represent the last First Day Coin Covers produced for quarters for the foreseeable future. The US Mint previously confirmed that they will not be creating similar products for the new America the Beautiful Quarters Program. This final year of covers also marks an improvement in design from the somewhat bland template used for the State Quarter covers. Finally, the covers boast relatively low production runs, as compared to the Presidential Dollar and State Quarters Coin Covers.

The Presidential Dollar Coin Covers have sold as many as 50,000 units for the initial releases of the series. Current releases have shown a decline in popularity, but still top more than 20,000 units each. The earliest State Quarter Coin Covers sold 100,000 per state before descending to lower levels. I wasn't table to find any sales figures for the later years of the series, but this old Mint News Blog post has some interim sales figures for the 2007 covers, showing sales above 20,000 for each state.

The last reported sales figures for the DC & U.S. Territories covers are included below. These numbers include sales through June 20, 2010. This week's full sales report is available on Coin Update News.

DC & US TERRITORIES COIN COVERS
District of Columbia	20,009
Puerto Rico	16,943
Guam	13,420
American Samoa	11,821
U.S. Virgin Islands	10,665
Northern Mariana Islands	10,187

The figures above should place the total sales solidly below even the lowest production State Quarter and Presidential Dollar Coin Covers. Time will tell whether these low numbers will create a new allure for these covers on the secondary market.

Recently completed eBay auction show some of the tougher to find State Quarter First Day Coin Covers selling around $30 to $40 each. About a year ago, I recall some covers selling for more than $100 each. On the low end of the spectrum, some of the high production covers sell for as little as $4 or $5 each. It bears mentioning that there seems to be somewhat of a thin market for these covers at present. Most are listed for sale with fixed Buy It Now prices and the sell through rate is low.

There may already be some measure of speculation taking place for the DC & U.S. Territory covers. Ever since the US Mint announced the impending conclusion of the offering, the pace of sales has increase to 100 or more covers per location per week. In the last week nearly 200 covers were sold for each location . Prior to the announcement, sales had been running about 30-40 per week for most issues.