Assembling a 1932-1998 Washington quarter set from "junk" silver and bank rolls

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

While I could hardly expect it to happen again, I actually did get both a 1932 D and S in a roll of junk silver. Two summers ago, I bought three rolls of junk silver quarters on eBay. It seems like someone used an old quarter book to help fill them. They were low grade, but I was still shocked. I think your goal is attainable and a fun challenge.

 

Good luck.

The only difficult clad quarters will be the W's.

But they are out there, although I have never gotten one

 

I always saved my clad impaired proofs. Left them all back in Syracuse. If you’re not completed by May they’re yours.

 

Maybe you can find the 1992-1998 silver proofs in the junk silver baskets also.

 

There are a number of "better" dates that may be difficult.
1934-D 1935-D 1935-S 1936-D 1936-S 1937-S 1938-S 1939-D 1939-S
1940-D 1940-S 1946-D 1946-S.

 

The 1937-S only had 1.7million minted. I bet it will be hard to find. The clad hunt should be fun also. Maybe you'll find some tossed mint set coins in the rolls.

 

Best wishes on this endeavor.

 

I am embarrassed to say this…. But for some unknown reason I throw all my eagle reverse clad quarters in a stash box. Probably 20-30 pounds of quarters in there. I don’t care to plunder them….. BUT if you want to I can tote them with me at FUN show time and you are welcome to plunder away if you like.

 

What you're going to find is that all the silvers will be available in pretty nice shape. Scarcer ones like the '34-D you might need to settle for an attractive evenly worn VG+ but a ;lot will be AU if you use multiple sources. A lot of junk silver has been picked over in the last twenty years so when you hit it things like nice F '40-D's won't be there any longer but an awful lot of scrap 90% washingtons are pretty nice.

A lot of the clad is going to be a bear. These coins have circulated for many decades and they're lost and abused badly. The toughest out west is a nice attractive '71 in any grade. Most are G/ VG now days but a third of them are cull and most of the other 2/3rds look like they've been beaten by an ugly stick. At least nice well made coins aren't too tough. The toughest in the east is the '68-D. It will have the same problems as the '71 but also is often poorly made.

I would keep my eye open for the type h such as the '72-D. You'd think a low mintage coin like this would be almost impossible to find but it isn't because they all went into circulation. Half are gone now but so are half of the others so the incidence remains about 1: 2200. The same applies to most of the varieties. People don't seek these coins so they're still available.

The problem with clads is somebody is scratching the bejeebers out of them. Most are just covered in shallow scratches now days. It's probably in the coin handling equipment.

I'd suggest filling all the spots and looking for nice examples as you go. Some dates I find far more desirable as a nice well made F than as a typical XF. Dates like the '66, '70-D ,and '82-P just don't come well made so grab them when they aren't banged up. You're probably going to be in for surprises like the difficulty of finding nice 1984 dated coins. These had very low rims so along with a little higher attrition even those not beaten up by the machines have scratches. All the dates are out there but some are very few and very far between and when you finally find one it will almost never be attractive.

I think the neatest thing is that they are out there. In the 1957 when I started nothing was in circulation because even semi-keys had been removed by collectors. Today the rarities are still in circulation. For instance there are about 50,000 of the '72-D type h and the nicest 10 of them would be among the best known grades. Only a few of these are known and were found so long ago that they are mostly in VF-AU condition. I believe Herb Hicks said he had several specimens.

 

Great reference points as I fill my clad quarters too
I have multiple rolls saved over the last 10 years to go though
Saved all the AU eagle rev. Gonna be fun.

 

Enjoy the hunt, and good luck.

 

The 1970 is another toughie in nicely made well worn condition. The mintage was higher than the '68-D and '69-D but a lot were made by worn dies and aren't going to look good unless they wear down to AG and hide it. They'll all be lost long before this can happen. The 1966 is a sleeper for the same reason: Even with its astronomical mintage most were extremely poorly made. It's also older and most were released before the end of 1967 giving it a major head start on the '68-D that wasn't completely in circulation until 1975. The mint adopted FIFO accounting in 1972 which required them to ship out the oldest stock first but it took three years to completely cycle through all the coins. A lot of the older dates (especially 1965) were being released through 1975 so you could still find nice AU '65 issues until the mid-'90's when the '66's were long gone in high grade.

Now days VG's and F can be top end for some of these dates if you insist on nice looking coins that are well struck, evenly worn, and not badly scratched. Every once in a while I'll see a nice VF old timer but most of these probably had very little circulation in this century.

Since 1999 collectors have been picking off a few high end coins and this combined with the relentless degradation of coins in circulation makes collecting quarters from circulation extremely challenging. Of course there are other factors coming into play as well. In the mid-'90's in the golden age of collecting eagle reverse coins there were 8 or 10 nice collectible coins in every roll. Very soon there won't even be 8 or 10 eagle reverse coins because of attrition and the vast mintages of bicentennial, states, parks, and women's issues. This makes it really tough to even find a few of the older dates so you can pick out a nice one.

Anyone who just keeps plugging away can come up with a nice set but few do it so few realize how tough they've become. In five boxes of coins there should be a nice set with most of the keys in nice attractive F or better and VF for older coins and XF/ AU for the later dates. I never imagined I'd see it but AU's eagle reverse quarters are no longer common and even nice XF's are getting harder to find.

One of these days collectors will start snapping up all the key dates that aren't bad culls. I don't recommend it because there are too many of them. But the numbers suggest this isn't as stupid as it sounds because high attrition is making these coins scarce and dilution is making them very hard to find.

Total coin usage could drop at any time because government is still suppressing cash and even quarters are almost irrelevant any longer. About the only place to actually spend quarters any longer is yard sales. If these start backing up in the system mintages will plummet and the whole picture changes.