Have got alot of quarters from the 70s would you save or spend? Have gotten in change over the years,if this is the wrong place to post let me know
poggie: Personally, I would spend them. Unless they are uncirculated, which I doubt since you said that you got them in change, I would roll 'em up and get rid of them.
There are some major rarities from the '70's that are available only in pocket change. Some of the regular issues are pretty tough to find well struck as well and even worn specimens might be of interest to future collectors. Reverses were changed almost every year in the '70's and sometimes one year's reverse is paired with the wrong obverse. There are a few very rare or scarce DDO's and DDR's as well. Two different reverses were used on some dates from the early '70's so there can be a real medley of obverses and reverses. Most of the varieties are quite scarce to rare though by the mid-'80's they became common. Probably 95% of the coins you have will never be of much interest to collectors so will never really have much of a premium. It's best to spend them to give other collectors a shot at them and to avoid losing the interest and opportunity value of these coins. I'd suggest you buy the blue cardboard folders and keep the best of each date in it. Check the duplicates to be sure they aren't a variety before you spend them. Look for coins with a minimum of wear and fully struck. Such coins are hardly common and many collectors today will be surprised how highly sought they become in time.
I've gotten a few AU bicentennal quarters in change. It's always funny to see worn quarters from the 80's and early 90's and then see a nice new-looking 1976 quarter in your hand. Guess all those people who hoarded them back in the day are beginning to see they are worthless and spending them. I like em, i don't have many, but the ones i do have are in damn good shape. I save 1965 quarters. I don't know why. Maybe because it's the first year of clad and every example i find is very well worn. I just like circulated coins. I will jump at the chance to buy a well worn old coin on ebay for dirt cheap. Nobody else wants it, but i love the fact that it has probably passed through thousands of sets of hands in it's lifetime.
I go through my change and check my quarters. I'm working on two sets of the clad series. Cladking is right about really good quality examples. There is currently another thread that talks about circulated vs. uncirculated, but my guess is that the rarest of all clad quarters are the XF++ examples. In the future, I think there'll be truckloads of uncirculated ones and mega-truckloads of well-worn ones. I'm guessing it'll be the ones that have obviously been lightly circulated that are going to be the hard ones to come by. From experience, I can tell you that XF+ examples are very, very hard to find from the early 80's backwards in change. Just my quarter's worth
I think people are going to be very surprised just how few of most dates of the clads will exist in unc. There weren't any rolls and bags saved or you'd see them once in a while. This leaves only the mint sets and attrition on these has been extremely high. Usually these sets are destroyed for a single coin or because they are worth more as spare change than as a set. This results in most of the coins from the sets going into circulation. This is not an insignificant matter because in many cases almost every single coin in the sets will be poor quality. Some are poor because of terrible strikes like the 1977 and some are just marked up and ugly like the '69. When large percentages of the sets are gone and rolls don't exist it makes nice survivors of importance even if they're only in XF+ or even in Fine. To really gain an understanding of the quantities we're dealing with consider the '83-P quarter. Everyone knew well in advance that there would be no mint sets and it would be a good time to set aside rolls. Many more rolls of these were saved than other dates from the era yet these rolls wholesale around $1000. Here it is one of the most common clad quarter rolls and it sell for a thousand dollars!! So look at the '81-P. 95% of the mint set coins have unattractive surfaces. Only about 1% of these coins are a nice attractive near-gem or better. Only 4% are attractive. This set also contains a few (~.7%) '81-P 25c with the type "d" reverse. Figure out how many of these survive in the half of mint set production which survives. It's the same across the board. These prices aren't low because the coins are common. They are low because the demand is still low. This isn't likely to continue forever. Every day there are more collectors and every day there are fewer of these in circulation. By this time next year there will be more states quarters in circulation than eagle reverse coins. As the public pays more attention to these there are sure to be some price increases among the scarcer issues.
the only quarters that are worth saving i think are the 1968D, 1969, 1969D, 1970, and 1971, just because they have a low than normal mintage. i also save the 1976 and 1976D, and also the first 2 or 3 state quarters if they are in nice shape. i don't think they will be worth something over face, but its still fun to search for them.:smile
You may well be right but I'm betting you're wrong. None of the regular issue clads of any denomination will be scarce or rare in unc, but there will be quite a few dates where there are well under 100,000 nice attractive examples. In some cases there are as few as just a couple thousand attractive pieces. Try finding an '82-P that's well struck by fresh dies. If people put together sets of these and desire nice attractive coins then we will find that many of these are far scarcer than something like an '09-S VDB cent and even scarcer than VF '26-S buffalos. None of them are "worth saving" if no one collects them and you have no in- terest in forming a collection. But I still maintain that it's probable that future collectors will desire sets of these in all grades and that tougher coins will de- velop a premium. They are a hoot to collect so I will collect them regardless.
Cladking, You know you do have some good points here when I think about. Although I spend my clads I DID purchase the complete set in UNC and proof before they started making the state quarters. I reasoned that interest in the whole series would go up and the 65-98 would be vastly ignored. The set HAS gone up quite a bit and I still have them all. I have also bought partial mint sets locally on occasion. My dealer might cut into one for the half or perhaps and Ike then practically give the rest of the set away. Hope you're right on this one for more than just my reasoning.
