2015-D Bombay Hook

Denver's 2015 Bombay Hook production reached 210,400,000 pieces, running 65 million behind Philadelphia's 275,000,000 for the same design and consistent with the broader 2015 pattern of Philadelphia-leads-Denver mintages across the lineup. The Delaware National Wildlife Refuge site was the only Atlantic-coast ATB issue of the year, paired with the Saratoga issue that closed the 2015 release schedule. Joel Iskowitz's reverse, the two great blue herons in salt marsh with framing grasses, is the same composition used at Philadelphia and was struck from the same master dies.

Strike quality on the Denver issue tracks the broader 2015 Denver output: well struck on the central bird figures through the early die states, with predictable softening on the individual feather rendering and the long bill profiles as dies aged. Graders concentrate on the heron contours and the marsh grass texture when separating gem from near-gem. The water-line foreground also matters in the rendering of the fine reed and ripple detail. The clad composition (75% copper-nickel over a pure copper core, 5.67 grams total) matches every Washington quarter struck since 1965, and counterfeit risk is functionally nil for circulation-strike modern clad. The high-grade market runs through PCGS and NGC; raw examples in the MS65 to MS66 band remain findable in original Denver bank rolls.

This is a Regular-classification issue where the action sits at MS67 and above. Population counts thin sharply at MS68, with the Denver issue typically pricing alongside its Philadelphia counterpart in slabbed grades. The compositionally ambitious two-bird arrangement has helped support steady collector interest in the Bombay Hook design across both mints, particularly among buyers focused on wildlife motifs and on artists' broader work across U.S. coinage. Roll hunters in the mid-Atlantic states still recover MS65 examples from original bank rolls, though yield has thinned since the design's release year. For the broader story of the ATB program and the series' design arc, see the Washington ATB series history.