I've been looking around trying to find any info on identifiers for type 2 standing liberty quarters. I've seen obsessively in depth info on certain other coins, especially lincoln cents, that it's even possible to identify exactly which plate was used to strike the coin. With how terribly many SLQs are dateless, I find it hard to believe there are no identifiers at all known for different years for type 2s. Anyone have any resources at all?
I thought I remembered seeing something like that here soon after I joined, late in 2010. I never was able to track it down again, though. It might just have been one of the periodic discussions about distinguishing 1916 SLQs from other dateless Type 1's; I was pretty fuzzy on most things at that point. I haven't looked hard for it in the intervening years, but if I've gone this long without coming across it, I'm starting to think it doesn't exist. There are an awful lot of dateless Type 2 SLQs out there, and some (1923-S) would surely have some value even dateless if they showed unambiguous identifiers. If it were possible to pick them out, we'd be seeing them on eBay and elsewhere. On a related note, it's apparently conclusively impossible to restore dates on SLQs. That seems like a shame. I entertained thoughts of turning a high-powered X-ray or electron-beam source on them when I worked in an academic lab environment, in hopes of spotting some structural changes under the worn-off date, but it was kind of farfetched at best.
I thought I read something a month or two ago about this. There's a marker at the top of obverse, with that rim pattern. Sorry, forgot specifics. Look on coin update. I might have read it there, or coin week
I have read quite a few places around the web, including here, that there WAS a solution about 60 years ago that was, actually, able to retrieve dates on silver, produced by the same people who make the nickel date retrieving acid. however, it was partially cyanide, or arsenic, or something, and was taken off the market all that time ago.
I've seen the same claim, but I'm skeptical of it -- not the claim, but that such a product would work well enough to bother with. The laws of chemistry and metallurgy haven't changed in 60 years, even if the laws around shipping and consumer safety have. It's not as easy to get cyanide now, but it's still not terribly hard. If it were possible to convert "dateless" SLQs to "environmental damage" or "corroded" readable pieces, people would be doing it, and we'd be seeing the pieces that result. At least that's the way it seems to me.
I'm not going to say it's not out there but I have never seen information on all the die markers on all the Type 2s. I don't feel there are enough important dates to make the research worth the time. Dateless type 2s as a normal, don't carry a great deal of value.
It'd be nice if we could get die markers for at least the 1917/8 and the other good dates. Well, at least we can identify the 1916s. That's something, at least
