Old Quarters with Good Prices

The Seated Liberty design is one of the most common among classical United States coinage, and we might also argue the most loved. The artistry is that of Mr. Christian Gobrecht, third chief engraver of the Mint, and this iconic design ended up on everything from the tiny half-dime pieces all the way up to the big silver dollars. When it comes to the quarters, the Seated Liberty design was first unveiled in 1838 and held sway all the way to 1891. In that span of decades, there were some very high-mintage years and also some incredibly low lows. There were also four Mints that pounded out these quarters. Three branch mints that hammered these out were New Orleans, San Francisco and Carson City. With such a wide swath of dates and mintmarks, it seems like there ought to be at least a few bargains in the mix. Let’s see what we can find.

First, we should examine those highs. The Seated Liberty quarter came out of the gate pretty strong, with 466,000 being minted in Philly that first year. Curiously, it was the branch mint down in The Big Easy that came very close to 1 million of these 25-cent pieces just a few years later. The 1843-O is a pretty common piece, and not too costly when in a mid-level circulated grade. Importantly, the first date that out and out busted up beyond the million mark was the 1853, with the reduced-weight standard for silver in the coin – there were 15.2 million of them. By any count, that’s a lot of quarters. Ultimately, there would be more than a dozen dates and mintmarks that would see millions produced, with a few dates achieving more than 10 million. So we do indeed have some very common dates within this series.

Second, with the ceiling set for these pieces, as it were, let’s examine some prices. A quick scan down any price listing in Numismatic News’ Coin Market indicates that one of the aspects of collecting that has been hot for quite a while – Mint State pieces – is probably out of our comfort zone. Using the 1853 and the 1876 as two examples, because they are remarkably common, we find that Mint State examples in MS-60 will run at least $1,000. That’s a lot to spend for a single coin, whether it is classic silver or not. But if we are willing to slip down a grade or two, perhaps to AU-50, the grade for each plummets to about $350. This is quite a difference when we consider how close one of these grades is to the other.

With these two grades in mind, it’s wise to look through the entire series and see other command prices that are roughly similar, but for which the mintage figures are considerably lower. Two early dates we might pick on a little are the 1846 and 1849. Neither of these has a particularly high official mintage total – the first being 510,00 and the second being 340,000 – but both are connected to price tags that are not too different than the more common pieces we just saw. Now something like $425 will do the trick for an AU-50 specimen. And again, the launch point for prices seems to be going from AU to MS. If we can get our hands on either of these, it would indeed be a bargain purchase. So, it seems we have found two noteworthy bits of information. We have found that the line between AU and MS seems to be where the big price differences are. On top of that, we seem to have found that we can look at coins with official tallies of far less than 1 million coins and still not have to pay all that much more for them.

Third, though, let’s do this comparison with a few of the low-mintage dates. In an interesting twist, there are several years for which the production of quarters must have been an afterthought for the folks at any of the four mints. For example, in 1879 the main facility in the City of Brotherly Love only produced 13,600 Seated Liberty quarters. Three years earlier, the branch mint in the Wild West managed to pound out 4,944,000 of the 1876-CC version of this 25-cent piece. Perhaps because coins from Philly don’t have the color and panache of any coin with the “CC” mintmark on them, the price for this very rare 1879 is only $700 as an AU-50 piece, while the 1876-CC is $350 in the same grade – meaning a coin that is 363 times less common than the “CC” only costs twice as much. It’s tough to make the claim that spending $700 on any piece of classic United States silver is a bargain, but this comparison and these two prices do give us pause to think about just that.

Finally, it’s probably wise to realize that this series is large enough that we should revisit it sometime in the future. Right at this moment we have done nothing but a quick comparison between some very common dates, some that are in the middle and one that is downright scarce. We haven’t looked at the entire series in terms of just what $100 might buy us. Also, we have not mentioned at all the rather elusive beast within this line-up, the proofs. On the other hand, we did find what appears to be the dividing line between the common prices and the grades that command uncommon prices. Importantly, overall, we have seen there are indeed some bargains within the long string of dates that is the Seated Liberty quarter series.