It's understandable the same as knowing that if you see a Type 1 reverse on a buffalo nickel, it's 1913. For Barber quarters, it's pretty easy to see the differences but not so easy to remember them or the years they changed. And as I said, this knowledge is pretty useless for dateless Barber quarters, since the relevant features are the first to wear off. It's useful for busting counterfeits though.
1892 uses both reverses 1 and 2. So shouldn't this be Obverse 1/Reverse 1 is 1892. The obverse 1/reverse 2 1892 to 1899. I had to read it 4 or 5 times. So far I only focused on reverse types. I am not 100 percent sure about obverse. So currently I have some of all 3 reverse. I have not decided if keeping them all or not for the type set. So type 1 reverse: Type 2 reverse: Type 3 reverse:
Yes, I could have worded it better and been more thorough. I said "1893-1899 were exclusively 1/2" (emphasis added), which is accurate, but both 1892 and 1900 also have the Obv 1 / Rev 2 combination. Hub types used: 1892: Obverse 1 / Reverse 1, Reverse 2 1893-1899: Obverse 1 / Reverse 2 1900: Obverse 1, Obverse 2, Obverse 3 / Reverse 2, Reverse 3 1901-1916: Obverse 3 / Reverse 3 Hopefully the above is better, and you can see that 1/2 and 3/3 could be many dates, but if it's neither of those, it's either 1892 or 1900. And if you want to collect all the hub types, you only need 1892 and 1900 coins!
Took me a while to find a mention on obverses. Got the below off the barber coinage collectors page. Talking about 1 and 2. If you look at my 1892 type 2 coins above I think I see a difference between the 1892 and the 1892-O obverses. So the 1892 type 2's it looks like stars are a little farther from the rim on the 1892-o than 1892, but it could just be my old eyes seeing things in pictures. I need to quit going down this rabbit hole. 1892 Obverse — According to Julian, quarters from the first hub should have thinner borders, the words “In God We Trust” in a larger radius and the stars closer to the border than quarters from the second hub. However, I have been unable to notice a difference in the obverse of 1892 quarters. Nor is this obverse hub change mentioned by Breen or Lange. If changes in fact exist, the difference is hardly discernable.
That quote for 1892 comes from David Lawrence's Complete Guide to Barber Quarters, here https://archive.org/details/compguidebarb1994feig/page/8/mode/1up. I don't know who Julian is, but his observation about the radius isn't recognized as another obverse hub type, as far as I know. What is described there for 1892 as Type I and Type II only applies to the reverse hubs I think, and for the obverse it's just the 1892-1900 and 1900-1916 types. How Lawrence separates I, II and III is confusing. The Bowers book and the TPGs only describe two obverse types, distinguished by the strong ear cartilage introduced in 1900. The third obverse type I'm referring to is not in the literature other than an article I published in the BCCS journal a few years ago. In 1900, the obverse added the obvious ear cartilage but retained a crossbar in the W, and then later in 1900 (I believe in October), the W no longer has a crossbar and other very small changes were made to TRUST. This "no crossbar W" obverse was then used for the rest of the series, 1901-1916. Obverse 1, 1892-1900 - weak inner ear Obverse 2, 1900 - strong inner ear, crossbar W Obverse 3, 1900-1916 - strong inner ear, no crossbar W While the differences between 2 and 3 are quite minor, whether or not the W has a crossbar is clearly visible, and I estimate almost 40% of the 1900 coins have Obverse 2 - nearly 6 million coins. Why Barber decided to dink around with it, who knows, but there were definitely three different obverse masters used in 1900. If what Julian said about 1892 is true, then there were four obverse masters. Here's full coin images of the three types, from left to right 1, 2 and 3: Closeups of the WE TRUST changes, obverses 1, 2 and 3. Notice too how the relative lengths of the downstrokes of the second T changed, and ultimately the Ts both got "stubby." I've gotten so that I can just look at the second T and know which type it is. Long post but I wanted to clarify (hopefully). For a lowball, if you can see the inner ear, the W and the wing tips, you can tell whether or not it's a 1900 coin. But the date would remain long after those markers wore off.
@samclemens3991 there's no difference in total across the three mints that would be considered scarce - 50% Obv1, 31% Obv2 and 18% Obv3, based on a census I did 5 years ago of 345 quarters in the Heritage archives dated 1900. However, it's the obverse/reverse combinations where there are scarcities. Overall, the 1900-S 1/3 combination is rarest - only one found out of 120 1900-S coins examined. 1900 and 1900-O 1/3 are also both uncommon. No 1900 3/2 or 1900-O 2/2 combinations were found, and based on the monthly coinage and when I think the hubs were changed (mid-May Obv2 and Rev3, October for Obv3) there are good reasons for that. For example, for New Orleans only 6% of their coinage was Obv2, which was probably only 2 obverse dies worth, so they never paired it with Rev2. It's theoretically possible that one of these (1900 3/2 or 1900-O 2/2) will be found though. For SF, they didn't produce any quarters after September, so they were probably never shipped any Obv3 dies. I don't think any 3/2 or 3/3 pairs exist for 1900-S. Here's my "just to have one" 1900-S 1/3. I know there are collectors who have all the 1900 combinations for the previously documented obverse types and at least one who ended up having all that I think are possible (15 coins) including the new third obverse type. I've satisfied myself with slowly getting an example of every combination regardless of mint, but as you see above only 1900-O is known to have the 3/2. (This is a case where if the date was worn off, you'd know it was 1900)
