AboutMyCoinCheat sheet
Every date, variety and error in this series worth a second look. No prices: which of these are scarce has been settled for a century, and what they fetch is true for a week.
Dates and mint marks2
- 1932-D
- 1932-S
Read the date and the mint mark. No magnification, no judgement — either it says 1932-D or it does not.
Varieties6
- 1934 doubled die obverse
- 1937 doubled die obverse
- 1942-D doubled die obverse
- 1943-S doubled die obverse
- 1950-D over S and 1950-S over D
- 2004-D Wisconsin extra leaf
Look at one specific feature under magnification and decide what you are seeing. Most candidates are not.
Mint errors1
- 1965 quarter on a silver planchet
Weigh it or put a magnet to it. These are settled by a measurement, and looking at them settles nothing.
The series at a glance
- Struck
- 1932–present
- Designer
- John Flanagan
- Obverse
- George Washington — the John Flanagan portrait facing left to 2021, and the Laura Gardin Fraser portrait facing right from 2022
- Reverse
- Heraldic eagle on a bundle of arrows, 1932–1998; commemorative designs from 1999
- Edge
- Reeded
What it is made of, and when
The metal changed partway through, so the date decides the metal and the metal decides most of the value.
| Years | Composition | Filed under |
|---|---|---|
| 1932–1964 | 90% silver, 10% copper | Silver |
| 1965–1998 | Copper-nickel clad over a copper core | Clad |
| 1999–2021 | Copper-nickel clad over a copper core | Clad |
| 2022–present | Copper-nickel clad over a copper core | Clad |
Mints and mint marks
On the reverse of every silver quarter, below the wreath beneath the eagle and just above the ER of QUARTER. It moved to the obverse, to the right of Washington’s neck, in 1968. Quarters dated 1965, 1966 and 1967 carry no mint mark at all — the Mint dropped them nationwide to discourage hoarding during the coin shortage. On any other date up to 1979, no mark means Philadelphia; from 1980 Philadelphia marks its own quarters with a P, so a blank space on a modern quarter is not a Philadelphia coin but a coin worth looking at twice.
| Mint mark | Mint | Years | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | Philadelphia | 1932–1979 | No mint mark until 1980 |
| P | Philadelphia | 1980–present | The P was first used on the quarter in 1980 |
| D | Denver | 1932–present | |
| S | San Francisco | 1932–1954, 1968–present | Circulation strikes to 1954, proofs from 1968, and uncirculated coins sold in Mint rolls and bags from 2012 |
| W | West Point | 2019–2020 | Two million of each reverse design in 2019 and again in 2020, released into circulation deliberately. West Point also struck quarters in 1977-1979 and marked none of them, so those carry no W. |
Key dates
These are the issues worth conspicuously more than the rest of the run, and every one of them is identified by reading the date and the mint mark rather than by judging the coin. Mintages are the mint’s own published figures. No prices: which dates are scarce has been settled for a century, and what they fetch is true for a week.
| Date | Mintage | Why it is scarce |
|---|---|---|
| 1932-D | 436,800 | The lowest Denver mintage in the series, struck in the first year and in the worst of the Depression, when almost nobody was putting coins aside. |
| 1932-S | 408,000 | A smaller mintage still than the 1932-D, but more of them were saved, so it is usually the cheaper of the two first-year keys in worn condition. |
Varieties
A variety is not a key date. A key date is read off the coin with no judgement at all; a variety asks you to look at one specific feature and decide what you are seeing, which is why each row below says what to look at rather than what to look for in general.
| Variety | What to look at |
|---|---|
| 1934 doubled die obverse | Doubling on the motto IN GOD WE TRUST, strongest on the word TRUST.Philadelphia only. A 1934-D quarter has no equivalent variety. |
| 1937 doubled die obverse | Doubling on IN GOD WE TRUST and on LIBERTY.Ordinary 1937 quarters often show machine doubling, which is worth nothing. A true doubled die is raised and rounded; machine doubling is flat and shelf-like. |
| 1942-D doubled die obverse | Doubling on IN GOD WE TRUST, on a quarter carrying a D on the reverse. |
| 1943-S doubled die obverse | Strong doubling on both IN GOD WE TRUST and LIBERTY, with an S on the reverse. |
| 1950-D over S and 1950-S over D | One mint mark punched over the other on the reverse, showing under magnification as the remains of the wrong letter underneath. |
| 2004-D Wisconsin extra leaf | An extra leaf on the ear of corn on the reverse of the Wisconsin state quarter, in either a high or a low position. Denver only.Scratches and die gouges on ordinary Wisconsin quarters are taken for this constantly. The extra leaf is a raised, leaf-shaped feature, not a line. |
Mint errors
An error is not a variety. A variety is a die, so every coin struck from it carries the same feature and you identify it by looking. An error is one coin going wrong — the wrong blank fed into the press — and looking at it proves nothing, because the mistake is in the metal rather than in the design. A scale and a magnet settle every row below in under a minute, which is why the confirmed population is in the dozens and the number of people who think they have one is not.
| Error | Confirmed | What happened, and how to settle it |
|---|---|---|
| 1965 quarter on a silver planchet | At least a dozen, and the same mistake is known on a 1966. | Silver blanks left over from 1964 struck in the first year of the clad quarter, after surviving the changeover in the tote bags the mint stored blanks in.Weigh it, then look at the edge. A silver quarter weighs 6.25 g and has a plain silver-grey edge; a clad one weighs 5.67 g and shows a copper stripe running round it.Every ordinary 1965 quarter looks silver on its faces, because the outer layer is copper-nickel and that is what silver-coloured means here. The edge is the tell, and a worn clad quarter can still hide its stripe under grime — so the scale settles it, not the eye. |
Not an appraisal, and not an authentication. A coin worth four figures because of a variety or an error is worth certifying by a grading service before it is worth anything at all. Each one is a specialty with its own literature behind it.