A BU 1971 quarter goes for $36 a roll wholesale. XF's are quite tough in circulation and anything in nice VF or better is worth putting in a folder if you like to collect. The price guides are not realistic with moderns though finding buyers for circs is pretty tough now (partly because the prices guides are all wrong). One of those '65's is actually pretty nice, too. You can find better but not very easily.
hiii, thankyou for the answer. how can i. clean coins, quarters, pennies, dimes, nickels... ? i have my whole family searching. we have found up to 1912 pennies. would be a shame to ruin them by cleaning them wrong.
You dont clean them at all. Coins that you plan to collect should never, ever, never be cleaned. Cleaning greatly reduces the value and desirability.
As @frankjg has said, the correct way to clean coins is never. Let me rephrase that, never ever ever, EVER clean coins!
Cleaning is an art and requires a great deal of experience and practice. I could provide some of the basics but it would be inappropriate in this thread. So I'll just say to practice on coins with no collector value. Remember, if the coin looks cleaned in any way when you're done you've ruined it so try to learn what a cleaned coin looks like before you ever try it on a collectible coin.
There are two parts to the cleaning story. Let's start with the "never, ever, ever" part... Never use abrasive cleaning agents on a coin. No baking soda. No Comet cleanser. No toothpaste. Even liquid dish soap is mildly abrasive. Never try to clean a coin by rubbing. Not with a brush. Not with a wash cloth. Not even with a Q-tip or a fingertip. Never polish or buff a coin. Any of these things can render the collector value of the coin null and void. Now the rest of the story . . . older circulated coins often come with extra baggage: dirt, organic gunk accumulated from decades of handling, or any number of diferent types of environmental contaminants. These things can damage a coin over the long term, so ideally they need to be removed to the best of one's ability — without affecting the coin itself. Fortunately, there are safe ways to do it. First by soaking the coin — not rubbing, just soaking — in distilled water. If there's still gunk in the coin's devices, soaking in either acetone or xylene will often remove it. (Personally, every raw coin I buy gets a bath, because I don't know where it's been or what invisible nasty stuff might be lurking on its surface that could adversely impact the coin over time.) I won't go into the details of the process because there are numerous threads on the subject here on CT. Just do a search if you want to learn more. By the way, technically speaking I would consider this conservation, not cleaning. None of the materials mentioned interact chemically with coins themselves...just with the stuff that can accumulate on coins, and ultimately damage them. It's not a particularly complicated process, but as @cladking suggested, best to learn by practicing on coins with no collector value. Always err on the side of caution.