2004-D Michigan

Denver's 2004 Michigan quarter, the twenty-sixth release overall and the opening 2004 design, shares Donna Weaver's reverse with its Philadelphia counterpart: a peninsular outline of Michigan ringed by the five Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario) with "Great Lakes State" arcing above. The state entered the Union as the twenty-sixth state in 1837, and the coin's January 26 release opened the program's second half. Denver produced 225,800,000 pieces, trailing Philadelphia by about 8 million and tracking a comparatively narrow 2004 P-over-D split. The compressed geographic brief gave Weaver little room for figurative work; she handled it by treating the lake outlines as both subject and frame, with the result that the design reads coherently at coin scale despite carrying five named bodies of water in a single field.

Denver strikes on Michigan tend to come up well-defined. The Lower Peninsula's lake-edge curvature and the Upper Peninsula's slim outline resolve cleanly on early-die-state coins; the southwestern Lake Michigan coastline shows die-fill first on later die states because the peninsular line runs thinnest through that section. Washington's cheek and the field behind the head stay the obverse weak points for grading, with bag-handling marks at Denver scattering small contact across these areas and capping many candidates at MS66. PCGS and NGC populations are deep at MS66, narrower at MS67, and meaningfully scarce at MS68 in the population reports kept by the two major third-party grading services (TPGs). No FS-listed varieties have anchored to the issue.

The 2004-D Michigan opens the year-6 Denver lineup and carries the Great Lakes appeal that gives this issue cross-state collector reach. Roll searchers still pull premium strikes for full-detail gems, and MS67 Denver examples remain available for collectors building a top-grade run on a working budget. The design pairs naturally with the other Great Lakes state coins in regional topical sets. For wider context, see the 50 State Quarters series history.