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Message:: [QUOTE="cladking, post: 3176955, member: 68"]I've always found many dates of clad quarters to be fascinating and the 1973 is one of the most fascinating.  These were released over a very short period of time because the mint had already instituted FIFO accounting that required quarters in storage the longest to be shipped first.  All of them were released by early 1975 making this one of the first dates to be released in its entirety.  Some older dates like the 1965 were still sitting in storage as late as mid-'75. The 1973's seemed to wear extremely well in circulation  and AU's were still pretty common as late as 1981.  But time took a very heavy toll on these when all the luster finally wore off and they became heavily worn very quickly.  There were still a very few AU's in the mid-80's but most of the issue was heavily worn and they were getting pretty thin.  They also picked up scratches more than other dates.  The only explanation I can come up with is that they were annealed a little differently with the outside very hard but below this "crust" was a much softer metal. Even though these were so common in high grade early on I believe it will be among the toughest of all clads in nice VF or better. While the Denver was better struck it seems to have suffered more wear and higher attrition.  Only a nice well made and unmolested 1969-P will be tougher in VF, probably.[/QUOTE]