Celia Cruz Quarters Are Available Today, First U.S. Coins Featuring an Afro-Latina Figure

The limited edition Celia Cruz quarters are officially in circulation starting Monday, the first U.S. coins to feature an Afro-Latina figure.

Cruz, the four-time Latin Grammy award winner known for her Salsa hits including “La Vida es un Carnaval,” and “La Negra Tiene Tumbao,” was selected as one of twenty women whose image will appear on the back of a quarter as a part of the American Women Quarters Program (AWQP). Other 2024 recipients include Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a surgeon and abolitionist, and Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first Asian-American woman to serve in Congress. 

Elizabeth C. Babcock, director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, says the AWQP is another way to document history. “It's been an absolutely amazing opportunity for us to help in our mission, which is to make sure that as we think about American history, that we tell the complete history, which obviously includes the story of the many ways women have been part of our history, and continue being involved,” she says.  

Read More: The Story Behind the Celia Cruz Quarter Coming in 2024

The U.S. Mint says they cannot predict the exact amount of Celia Cruz quarters they will ship out, as that depends on the orders they receive from the Federal Reserve, but they say they typically produce anywhere from 200 to 500 million of each quarter. 

Quarters with the “Queen of Salsa” are only going to be made for a limited time, until mid-October. “We will continue to mint Celia Cruz quarters until we transition to our next honoree. After that, no more Celia Cruz quarters will be minted,” Brent Thacker, media relations officer for the U.S. Mint, tells TIME. 

The coins are available for purchase starting on Aug. 7 on the U.S. Mint’s website. The U.S. Mint will also send out the coins to federal reserve banks and armored carriers, who then dispense the coins to other financial institutions and retailers. Coins are typically seen in pocket change an average of three to six weeks after they have been produced.

The story behind the quarter

Women have long been underrepresented when it comes to national currency. The first woman to be featured on a U.S. coin was Spanish Queen Isabella in 1893, though the next coin with a female figure would not come again until 1979, per the U.S. Mint. 

To combat this, Congress passed the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which authorized the U.S. Mint to create new designs on the quarter-dollar coin to commemorate five American women a year. The program has been running since 2022 and will come to an end in  2025. 

Honorees are decided by the U.S. Mint and other contributors, including various museums and the Congressional Bipartisan Women’s Caucus. “We put out a call to the public to get ideas for recommendations for what women should appear on these quarters, and then we went through a whole selection process that included curators [and] historians, and other researchers here at the Smithsonian to make recommendations and final designs on who we selected,” says Babcock. 

Once an honoree is chosen, artists at the Mint make up their own designs in collaboration with researchers that are knowledgeable about the woman in question. For Cruz, artists spoke to Omer Pardillo, Cruz’s former manager and executor of her estate, and others, including the Smithsonian Women’s History Museum. The quarter’s design was made by U.S. medallic artist Phebe Hemphill, and was unveiled to the public in July 2023.

Partners with the AWQP are excited about the coin’s impact. “Everybody from a little kid who's getting change from making a purchase, or wants a special quarter and could keep it as memento, to everyday people who maybe aren't familiar with her, but are going to get the quarter and look on that side and say, ‘Oh, Celia Cruz. I’m going to find out more about her,” Babcock says, will benefit from the new quarter design.