How Many Quarters Are in Circulation? What Is Known and What Is Not
Nobody publishes an official count of how many quarters are in circulation. The Treasury reports coins in circulation only by dollar value, with quarters lumped in with dimes, nickels, cents and half dollars: $44.49 billion of that small change as of 30 June 2025. What is published is how many quarters the Mint makes, about 15.4 billion since 2019.
That gap between what is counted and what people want to know is the whole story. Below are the real figures, where they come from, and how far you can honestly push them.
How many quarters are in circulation: what the government reports
The Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service publishes coin and currency totals in the Treasury Bulletin. Its June 2025 table of amounts outstanding and in circulation splits coin into just two groups: dollar coins and "fractional coins," meaning everything below a dollar.
| Coin, 30 June 2025 | Outstanding | In circulation |
|---|---|---|
| Dollar coins | $6,548,044,192 | $5,745,416,036 |
| Fractional coins (half dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, cents) | $45,541,857,080 | $44,486,819,644 |
| All coin | $52,089,901,272 | $50,232,235,680 |
Two things to know about these numbers. "In circulation" here means every coin not held by the Treasury or the Federal Reserve Banks, so it includes coins in jars, drawers, vending machines and sofa cushions. And the table excludes coins sold to collectors at premium prices, so proof sets and Mint rolls bought from the Mint are not in it.
The arithmetic is simple. Of the $45.54 billion of fractional coin outstanding, the Federal Reserve Banks held $692.8 million and the Treasury $362.2 million. Everything else, $44.49 billion, counts as in circulation, whether it is changing hands daily or has not moved in decades.
The Federal Reserve does not fill the gap. Its currency in circulation table covers paper money only, by denomination. On coin, the Fed says it plays "a purely distributional role": the Mint makes coins, and Reserve Banks pass them to banks and credit unions, as its coin circulation FAQ explains.
The one hard limit
There is one thing the Treasury figure does tell you. If every dollar of fractional coin in circulation were in quarters, there would be about 178 billion of them ($44.49 billion divided by 25 cents). That is a ceiling, not an estimate. Cents, nickels, dimes and half dollars all take a share of that value, so the true number of quarters is lower, by an amount no agency publishes.
How many quarters does the Mint make
Production is counted precisely. The Mint publishes circulating coin production by denomination, mint and year in its circulating coins dataset. These are the quarter figures, read on 23 October 2026.
| Year | Philadelphia | Denver | Total quarters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 791,400,000 | 860,200,000 | 1,651,600,000 |
| 2020 | 1,397,600,000 | 1,370,400,000 | 2,768,000,000 |
| 2021 | 998,800,000 | 1,169,400,000 | 2,168,200,000 |
| 2022 | 1,274,600,000 | 1,293,000,000 | 2,567,600,000 |
| 2023 | 1,335,200,000 | 1,330,400,000 | 2,665,600,000 |
| 2024 | 822,000,000 | 858,800,000 | 1,680,800,000 |
| 2025 | 665,400,000 | 525,600,000 | 1,191,000,000 |
| 2026 (to date) | 294,200,000 | 407,200,000 | 701,400,000 |
| Total | 7,579,200,000 | 7,815,000,000 | 15,394,200,000 |
2020 is the high point in this run, at 2,768,000,000. 2025 is the low point among full years, at 1,191,000,000. The 2026 figure was still climbing when we checked, as the five new 2026 quarter designs went out one after another.
Three notes on reading the table. The year is the year of production, not the date on the coin: CoinNews reported that the Mint struck the first 2026 Semiquincentennial quarters in December 2025, 79,800,000 Mayflower Compact and 1,000,000 Revolutionary War, which is why 2025 production is 80.8 million higher than the 1,110,200,000 American Women Quarters dated 2025. The dataset's published description notes that coins made for its numismatic rolls and bags come from the circulating departments and may be included in these totals. And the 2022 total is 600,000 lower than the sum of the Mint's separate per-design American Women Quarters dataset, a small difference between two of the Mint's own files.
Quarters among all coins made in 2025
Quarters are a large share of what the Mint makes. CoinNews reported from Mint data that the Mint delivered 4,947,280,000 coins of all kinds to the Federal Reserve Banks in 2025, down 11.9% from 5,613,640,000 in 2024 and the fifth straight yearly decline. The 1,191,000,000 quarters were about 24% of that total.
The same report noted that cent production for circulation ended in 2025, with a ceremonial final strike on 12 November. Cents had been 1,300,400,000 of the 2025 total, so from 2026 the quarter's share of circulating coin production is set to grow even if the number of quarters does not.
Quarters in circulation versus quarters made
Production is not the same as circulation, and the difference cannot be measured from public data. Coins leave use in many ways nobody counts: kept in jars, pulled by collectors, lost, damaged, carried abroad. Others come back into use years later when a jar is cashed in.
The path a new quarter takes is simple. The Mint ships from Philadelphia and Denver to the Reserve Banks, which buy coin from the Mint at face value. The Reserve Banks give the Mint monthly coin orders and a 12-month rolling forecast, and then supply banks and credit unions as the public demands. The Fed never hands coins to the public directly. Between orders, coin sits in Reserve Bank vaults or at coin terminals run by armored carriers under contract, and the Reserve Banks pay out circulated coin that banks have deposited as well as new coin from the Mint. A quarter can make that round trip many times.
Can anyone estimate it?
An estimate would need two inputs: total quarter production since copper-nickel quarters began in 1965, and a rate at which coins drop out of use. The Mint's machine-readable data starts in 2014, and no agency publishes a loss rate for quarters. Any precise figure you see online rests on an assumed loss rate, so treat it as a guess, however exact it looks. What can be said: 15,394,200,000 quarters were made for circulation from 2019 through October 2026 alone, worth $3.85 billion at face value.
The 2020 coin shortage that was not a shortage
The question of how many quarters exist got attention in 2020, when stores ran short of change. The Mint's public service announcement of 5 August 2020 said it directly: "This is NOT a coin supply problem. It's a circulation problem." Coins were not moving through the economy as fast as before the pandemic.
The Mint's director said the Mint was on track to make more coins that year than in almost 20 years, and the quarter column above shows it. In a March 2022 release the Mint was still asking people to use exact change and to cash in coins at kiosks, noting that cash transactions had fallen sharply since 2019.
Where the American Women Quarters fit
From 2022 to 2025 the Mint struck 8,024,800,000 American Women Quarters at Philadelphia and Denver. Set against the table above, they account for essentially all quarter production for circulation in those four years, apart from the 2026 coins struck in December 2025. The mintage of every design is on our reference page.
The per-design numbers vary a lot. The 2023 Edith Kanakaʻole quarter had 741,400,000 struck; the 2025 Dr. Vera Rubin quarter had 118,800,000, the series' key date. Even the scarcest one is common by any collector's measure, which is why a circulated example is worth 25 cents (see the value guide).
For the full list of programs those billions of quarters belong to, see how many different quarters there are. If you want to pull American Women Quarters out of circulation yourself, a $10 bank roll holds 40 quarters, and our quarter collection guide explains how to search one.
Frequently asked questions
- How many quarters are in the world?
- No one knows exactly, and no agency publishes a count. The U.S. Mint publishes how many it makes: 15,394,200,000 quarters for circulation from 2019 through October 2026 alone. How many of the quarters made since 1965 are still in use is not measured.
- How many quarters does the Mint make each year?
- In the Mint's figures for 2019 to 2025, between 1,191,000,000 (2025) and 2,768,000,000 (2020) quarters a year, struck at Philadelphia and Denver. The Mint sets production, guided by monthly coin orders from the Federal Reserve Banks.
- How much coin is in circulation in the United States?
- The Treasury reported $50,232,235,680 of coin in circulation on 30 June 2025. Of that, $5,745,416,036 was dollar coins and $44,486,819,644 was fractional coin, which includes quarters along with half dollars, dimes, nickels and cents.
- Was there really a coin shortage in 2020?
- The Mint said no. In August 2020 it called the problem one of circulation, not supply: coins were not moving through the economy as quickly as before the pandemic. Quarter production that year was the highest in the Mint's 2019 to 2026 figures.
- How many American Women Quarters are in circulation?
- The Mint struck 8,024,800,000 of them for circulation from 2022 to 2025, at Philadelphia and Denver. How many are still in use is not published, but with every design struck in the hundreds of millions, all 20 can still be found in change and bank rolls.
Sources
- Bureau of the Fiscal Service, Treasury Bulletin, U.S. Currency and Coin Outstanding and in Circulation (USCC-1, 30 June 2025)
- Federal Reserve, Currency in circulation: value
- Federal Reserve, What is the Federal Reserve's role in the circulation of coins?
- Federal Reserve, Currency and Coin Services
- U.S. Mint, Circulating coins production dataset (CSV)
- U.S. Mint, American Women Quarters production dataset (CSV)
- U.S. Mint, Public service announcement regarding circulating coins (5 August 2020)
- U.S. Mint, Encourages the public to get coins moving (31 March 2022)
- CoinNews, U.S. Mint coin production in 2025 (26 January 2026)
- Data.gov, Circulating coins production figures (dataset description)
Last verified: October 2026. Mintage figures are final.