Read a comment in a coin forum that changed how I organize my state quarters

Someone in a coin collecting group mentioned they sort their state quarters by the year they entered the union instead of alphabetical or by mint mark. I never thought about it that way before. I've got a small collection of state quarters I started when I was a kid, maybe 30 of them, and I always just tossed them in a binder in the order I found them. That comment got me thinking about how the order of admission actually tells a story of expansion across the country. I spent last Sunday reorganizing them by admission date from Delaware in 1787 on up to Hawaii in 1959. It felt way more meaningful now, like I'm seeing the history of the states unfold as I flip through. Has anyone else tried a weird organizing method like this that made their collection click in a new way?

2 comments

2 Comments

parker18310d ago

Does organizing by admission date change how you see the gaps in your collection? I started doing that with my state quarters and realized I had a ton from the early states but almost nothing from the western ones. It forced me to hunt down those later states and actually learn their history instead of just grabbing whatever quarter I found.

michael_jenkins399d ago

Sorting by admission date worked for me too, @parker183, it made the gaps actually mean something historical.