I'm not sure if we would have thought it was cool to see them or not. Sure today I would think it would be cool because i know what they are and what they mean to us collectors. But if my gradchildren tell me one day "man pappy that must have been cool to see all those state quarters in change all the time" . And my responce will be no it wasn't. Dang I hate those things, along with every minted coin today.
I guess "cool" is a bad word. I think it would be very nice to have beautiful coinage. Without being overly political, I feel this is a wonderful country that has the ability to produce amazing things. With all our power and technology, I find it very sad that we have to look to the past to find beauty in our coins. I think we have the ability to produce beautiful coinage and simply chose not to.
It's always nice to see higher grade SLQ. Higher grade SLQ are very few and far between I've noticed over they years. I got my first AU graded SLQ (1925) for christmas when I was 14 and that was 14 years ago. It's still one of my favorite coins in my collection. It has that original cartwheel luster that we all love. Is it just me or does the SLQ coin in the original post look a little cleaned? It's hard to tell because of the two types of lighting hitting the surface but it kinda does to me.
Nice copy you have there. I have plenty of VG/F SLQs that have eye appeal and some MS ones as well. Tough series to collect, getting Full Head examples for some years is quite the challenge.
Who's "they" and wrecked in what way? You don't like the three stars under the eagle? Or raising it up so the feather tips covered part of the A? (Which WAS part of MacNeil's original work.) Or maybe you don't like making te US coat of arms bolder on the shield. It can't be the addition of the chain mail as "they" had nothing to do with that. That was all MacNeil's doing and he didn't have authorization or permission to make that change. In fact he went against orders in making that change. It probably wouldn't have mattered, no circulating coin has even been widely appreciated by the public or collectors while it has been in current production. If you go back and read the contemporary comments in the newpaper letters to the editor and the letters in numismatic periodicals whenever a new coin design is released they are almost without exception highly critical of the design, how ugly they are, typically calling them a new low and crying about how much better the designs of other nations are. The standing Liberty quarter though is something of an exception, there was no real comment about it at all.
Tough to call from the pics, if it's unc as it looks, MS63FH or better, which makes it a $500 or so coin. 65s bring around $1k.
I think it should have had the Dolphins on it as per his original work. Anyhoo, funny you mention the bad reception coins get when introduced, when they were new people hated Morgan Dollars. I will say that the Mercury Dime was much more attractive than the Roosevelt Dime (Which has been around PLENTY long enough.. 62 years!)
It does look like it was cleaned long ago , along with a little wear , but still a beautiful well struck coin . rzage
The state quarters might prove interesting in the future and I'm aready appreciating them more now than when they were released, but from an aesthetic perspective those coins where high art and the Washington quarter just isn't. Ruben
