Today marks the day I finally got a Maria Tallchief quarter, and if my eyes aren't deceiving me, I can see why it took so long. If you go to MINTAGES - American Women Quarters, you can see that normal mintages for S quarters are very low, which is what drives the value of the S ATB quarters up in high grades. This is saying, though, that mintages for each mint are less than 1 million. This means that all 3 mints combined have a lower mintage than the 1950-D nickels, and Denver has made less of these quarters than 1914 Lincoln cents. I saw that and thought, what? Is this an issue for collectors only, or just a low-mintage coin? Someone please tell me that my eyes are deceiving me. If not, my advice is to collect them while you can.
Holy cow. I can't believe those S-mints have such tiny mintages yet buyers are picking through them for the best specimens and tossing the rest into circulation. The P & D mint Tallchiefs are probably just the result of not having been made yet when these numbers were compiled.
The S quarters are definitely rare compared to the others. In recent years, they've had lower mintages than W quarters, and while the S's are for collectors, they can skyrocket in value compared to circulating coins. Often it takes until MS68 for an S quarter to become valuable, but some ATBs with lower mintages, such as Cumberland Island, can be worth quite a bit in MS67. Some of these people putting the S quarters into circulation may be missing out on these coins.
You're comparing the S quarters to circulation strikes. All non-circulation strikes will have lower mintages, BU S quarters included. You have to buy a roll from the mint. Virtually all of them will stay BU, so mint state examples will be plentiful. Compare this to most modern commemorative coins from the US mint, many of which have mintages lower than 300,000. They do not usually hold their initial sale value. With that said, those Woman quarter mintages are low, compared to the ATB S mint quarters. Supply and demand I guess.
lol I have bags of the 2012 s quarters and those not even the lowest mintages (at about 600k each some of the 13s, 14s and 15s are only 400k each
Thanks! I hope you, and everyone else who collects coins, can find some of these quarters. They may be the next big numismatic thing. Really? I thought the mintages were around 1,000,000 for each.
They did 2 S types... Silver and Clad/circulation... the clad/circ numbers are very low the silvers were 800k, 1m each type
Historically collectors are primarily concerned with coin types that circulated. Sure many like the high quality of proof strikes or the interesting and historical commems but far larger numbers of people have always been concerned with collecting circulating coinage and I don't believe collectors in the future will distinguish between S and W mint marks if most of the S-mints end up in circulation. I doubt an S-mint can get a lot of wear because there are a lot of people looking at circulating coins who will remove them before they get a lot of wear. In 1999 I found a proof 1968 quarter that was worn down to VG! This probably can't happen today but the demand for the S-mints could become as high as for any other circulating modern.
I wonder if dealers are putting then in when they buy collections. I have to believe most of them are released by the buyers because they are low grade.
I'd say they are. Dealers tend to buy big collections, often with W and S quarters at face value. They're quite weird, though, not to build a "PDSCCOW" set of coins! My set of those mints would contain an O half, my 1875 CC dime, S and W quarters, and the other 2 being random. However, I certainly wouldn't give up W or S quarters if I could get 'em at face.
I will be a very long gone after thought before there will be any great value to these coins. Very nice coins indeed, but I have no interest in collecting them for my heirs. Thanks, and good luck.
If Dansco and Whitman were to add BU S and W slots to their folders and albums, I bet these coins would have more value.
That's a good point there. Honestly, I think this is what keeps lower-mintage coins so valuable; people are always gonna look to fill those books, and the right coin can make the difference of everything. The only problem is that people will think that the S quarters are for proofs instead of regular strikes.
They're prominently listed in the Redbook now. As new collectors advance they will naturally discover the existence of these and most will want them. This hasn't meant much of anything in the past because there were no new collectors but today there are millions of them.
As long as these collectors know what to look for, they will absolutely want them. Hopefully there's not a field of collectors who think their half dollars are worth thousands because they're not seen very often.
