2022-P Anna May Wong

The 2022-P Anna May Wong quarter launched the second year of the American Women Quarters Program and made Wong the first Asian American ever to appear on United States currency. Born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905, she broke into Hollywood as a teenager and carried her career across the rocky transition from silent film into early sound, headlining "The Toll of the Sea" in 1922 and traveling overseas to escape the typecasting that American studios forced on her, returning for her best-remembered turn opposite Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express" in 1932. Philadelphia struck 226,800,000 pieces for general circulation, a figure that made this the highest mintage of the five 2022 American Women releases and ensured that Wong's portrait reached pocket change quickly across the eastern and central United States. The release also marked the second year of the program created under Public Law 116-330, the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020 signed January 13, 2021.

The obverse carries Laura Gardin Fraser's 1932 Washington portrait, the design originally submitted for the bicentennial quarter of 1932 and passed over in favor of John Flanagan before finally reaching circulation through this program. The reverse, designed by United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program artist Emily Damstra and sculpted by John P. McGraw, shows Wong in a head-and-shoulders pose with her chin resting on her hand and the bulbs of a theater marquee glowing behind her. Specifications follow the standard clad format: 91.67 percent copper and 8.33 percent nickel clad over a pure copper core, 5.67 grams, 24.3 millimeters, and a reeded edge. Authentication on circulation strikes turns on weight tolerance and the crispness of the marquee bulbs, which flatten quickly on counterfeit clad planchets.

For collectors, gem Mint State material remains broadly available because Philadelphia bag-fresh rolls reached the secondary market in volume. Premiums concentrate at Mint State 67 and above, where Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) and Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) populations thin and registry demand sharpens. Read more on our Washington Quarters (American Women) series history.