2015-S Bombay Hook, NIFC

The 2015-S Bombay Hook, NIFC carries Joel Iskowitz's heron-and-snowy-egret reverse on a San Francisco business-strike planchet, the fourth of the year's five collector-only quarter releases. Iskowitz's design places a great blue heron in the foreground with a snowy egret in the middle distance, both wading birds emblematic of the tidal salt marshes that define the Delaware national wildlife refuge the design honors. The Mint produced 1,177,515 pieces, the uniform 2015 NIFC figure, and sold them through annual Uncirculated Coin Sets and two-roll bag products from the catalog. Bombay Hook is the only Delaware site honored across the entire ATB program.

The coin is a business strike with cartwheel luster, not a proof, and the finish call is the load-bearing authentication question. Both the 2015-S NIFC and the 2015-S clad and silver proofs of this design carry an S mintmark above Washington's head, so mintmark placement does not separate them; field reflection does. Cartwheel rotation across the open fields reads business strike, while mirrored fields with frosted devices reads proof. Iskowitz's two-bird composition depends on fine wing-feather detail and the texture of the marsh foreground, and on a NIFC business strike those elements read with standard Mint State definition rather than the high-contrast frosted relief a proof produces. The clad composition (75% copper-nickel over a pure copper core, 5.67 grams) is the standard Washington quarter formula since 1965.

This is a Regular-classification issue with a small wildlife-collector constituency beyond NIFC completists. The two-bird composition is among the more visually rich designs in the year's lineup, and the issue carries a modest crossover following among Delaware regional collectors and U.S. wildlife-coin specialists. Population reports at MS67 are well-supplied, MS68 examples come up regularly, and pricing tracks the NIFC norm of modest premiums for raw examples and small step-ups at certified gem grades. Set builders working through the 45-entry NIFC run typically pick the date up from broken Mint Sets at retail-floor pricing. For the broader story of the ATB program and the NIFC collector-only product line, see the Washington ATB series history.