2011-P Vicksburg

Vicksburg National Military Park drew slot nine in the ATB sequence, the fourth 2011 release and the program's second Civil War battlefield honoree after Gettysburg earlier in the year. Thomas Cleveland's reverse pictures the USS Cairo on the Yazoo River, a Union ironclad that struck a Confederate mine on December 12, 1862 and sank within twelve minutes. The wreck was raised in 1964 and now sits in the park's museum complex; the reverse shows the vessel as it appeared during its brief operational career rather than as the recovered hull. Philadelphia struck 30,800,000 pieces, sitting in the middle of the narrow 2011 P-mint range.

Strike quality on the issue concentrates at the ironclad's gun-port detail and the river water in the foreground. The Cairo's armor plating and turret structure carry the bulk of the design's small-detail load, and dies that show even moderate wear flatten the port-and-hull texture quickly. Cleveland's first ATB design pushed against the limits of what the quarter format could hold in fine architectural relief: the warship composition is busier than the typical landscape ATB reverse and the grading consequences run accordingly. The clad composition is the standard 75% copper-nickel cladding over a pure copper core (5.67 grams, 24.26 mm). PCGS (the Professional Coin Grading Service) and NGC handle the slabbed market for graded examples.

The 2011-P Vicksburg reads as a Regular common date with premium tiers concentrated at MS67 and above. The dense detail on the warship makes the issue genuinely strike-sensitive: well-struck early-die-state examples in MS67 carry a meaningful aesthetic premium over late-die-state pieces graded the same number. The Civil War subject matter brings the same crossover demand seen on Gettysburg, with Mississippi set builders and naval-history collectors providing an additional demand floor. For the broader story of the ATB program, the 2008 authorizing legislation, and the series' design arc, see the Washington ATB series history.