2023-D Bessie Coleman

The 2023-D Bessie Coleman quarter carries the Denver Mint's strike of the design recognizing the first Black and first Native American woman to hold an international pilot's license, issued by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale in France on June 15, 1921. Coleman's story is the kind that programs like this exist to surface: born in Atlanta, Texas in 1892, sharecropper's daughter, factory hand turned manicurist, denied entry to every American flight school on account of her race and sex, she taught herself French at night, sailed for Le Havre in November 1920, completed her training at the Caudron Brothers' aviation school, and returned to barnstorm before crowds across the South and Midwest until her fatal accident in 1926. Denver struck 317,200,000 pieces, edging Philadelphia's 302,000,000 and making the D-mint the higher-volume facility for the design, with rolls distributed primarily through western Federal Reserve banks.

The obverse continues Laura Gardin Fraser's 1932 Washington portrait. The reverse, by United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program designer Chris Costello and sculpted by Eric David Custer, places Coleman in her pilot's gear with a biplane and clouds streaming behind her shoulder, a composition the artist anchored to the most-reproduced studio portrait of her from circa 1922. Composition stays at the program-standard clad cupronickel of 91.67 percent copper and 8.33 percent nickel bonded over pure copper, 5.67 grams, 24.3 millimeters, with a reeded edge. Denver strikes consistently display sharper biplane detail than the Philadelphia pieces, a useful identifier when grading roll material from mixed sources, and the D mintmark sits at the right of "IN GOD WE TRUST" on the obverse.

The collector market mirrors the Philadelphia issue: raw rolls trade near face, while Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) and Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) Mint State 68 examples command meaningful premiums as registry collectors chase the top-pop tier. Read more on our Washington Quarters (American Women) series history.