2011-P Gettysburg

Gettysburg opened the 2011 ATB year, the program's second annual installment and the first design honoring a Civil War battlefield site. Joel Iskowitz's reverse features the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Monument, a tall column topped by an Irish soldier figure that marks the position where the regiment helped repel Pickett's Charge on July 3, 1863. The monument sits on Cemetery Ridge in the park and was dedicated September 11, 1891. Philadelphia struck 30,400,000 pieces, the first 2011 P-mint figure and a notable step down from the 2010 launch-year totals (which had averaged just over 34 million per design). The 2011 production drop reflects ongoing post-recession Federal Reserve order softness for new circulating quarters.

Strike quality on the issue concentrates at the monument's sculptural detail, particularly the soldier figure at the top of the column and the inscription panel at the base. The vertical composition is unusual for the ATB series, which generally favored horizontal landscape designs, and the strike behavior on tall vertical relief carries different grading concerns than the more typical horizontal scenes. Late-die-state pieces show softened detail on the soldier figure first. The clad composition is the standard 75% copper-nickel outer cladding over a pure copper core (5.67 grams, 24.26 mm diameter). PCGS (the Professional Coin Grading Service) and NGC handle the slabbed market, with raw MS65 examples still occasionally appearing in original bank-wrapped rolls from Mid-Atlantic Federal Reserve releases.

The 2011-P Gettysburg is a Regular common date in collecting terms, with premiums concentrated in MS67 and a meaningful jump at MS68. Among 2011 designs, the issue draws extra attention from Civil War collectors and from Pennsylvania set builders, which gives it a marginal demand bump that does not yet translate to a price spread above the rest of the year. The lower 2011 mintage relative to 2010 has the potential to affect long-term availability in high grades, particularly MS68 and above, where the population reports are already thinner than the 2010 issues. For the broader story of the ATB program, the 2008 authorizing legislation, and the series' design arc, see the Washington ATB series history.