State Quarters

I don't know if anyone ever clicks the link on the right to check out Fireflies in the Cloud, but he's had an ongoing discussion about the new Arizona state quarter. Seriously, wouldn't the Code Talkers have been the coolest quarter ever? I brought it up yesterday at work while we were talking about numistmatism in general, and it eventually led to the discovery of QuarterDesigns.com. It's a great reference for all the state quarters (if you're into that kind of thing- and who isn't, right?) but the best part is that you can see several proposed designs that didn't make it.

For example, here in the Old Line State we seem to agree that the Maryland quarter is pretty lame. Wouldn't this one have been much better? I can't believe none of them featured a crab, which is really what Maryland is known for. And sure, Virginia's quarter is okay, what with the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement. Call me biased, but I think the House of Burgesses would have been much more endearing, don't you?

But the reason I write is because of dear old New Mexico. They're pretty die hard with the Indian Sun, so I'm not surprised that's the design that was chosen. But how about this? Can you believe that design was even considered? Woo! It's either brilliant, insensitive, ballsy, or all three.

For the record, I like the Indiana Quarter, but it would've been cool to get basketball in there somehow. I mean, they had enough choices.