By teleconference Jan. 16, the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee recommended one of 13 designs freshly submitted representing the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Island. The committee had made no recommendation from the first designs proposed for the 2019 American Memorial Park quarter dollars.

The recommended design is from among a group of four designs favored by officials from American Memorial Park at Garapan, Saipan.

Collectors’ Clearinghouse author Mike Diamond identifies a new kind of error. Also inside this issue, protecting your paper money collection from mold and advice for participating in online auctions.

The recommended design is a left side view of a young Chamorro woman wearing traditional dress approaching the flag circle with an offering of flowers, resting her left hand on the plaque whose text honors the sacrifice of those who died in the liberation of Saipan.

Many of the rejected designs were more military in theme. Most of the objections to the rejected designs were not about the imagery depicted, but were more technical in nature. Sharply rendering the flag poles in many of the designs would be difficult with the low relief that would appear on a canvas as small as a quarter dollar, according to artist member Heidi Wastweet.

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A design she favored depicting a young Carolinian man and Chamorro woman in ceremonial dress standing in front pf the Court of Honor and Flag Circle in the park while holding a wreath of native flowers would be distorted if the design were modified to have the man and woman look down in solemn remembrance, as most visitors to the park area would likely be doing, rather than looking up.

The Chamorro are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, politically divided between the United States territory of Guam and the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Micronesia. The Carolinians, or Refaluwasch people, are an Austronesian ethnic group who originated in Oceania, in the eastern Caroline Islands and emigrated to the Northern Marianas.