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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;yakpoo, post: 1256963, member: 18157&quot;]In 1965, a postage stamp or a candy bar were 5¢. You could buy a gallon of gas or a pack of cigarettes for 25¢. Nowadays, you can get a postage stamp for 44¢ (but the Post Office is going broke) and you&#039;re lucky if you can find a candy bar for 50¢. Gas is $3.50/gallon and I saw a sign the other day that advertised Marlboro cigarettes for $5.85/pack...like that&#039;s some kind of great deal!</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The point is</b>...anyone that kept original rolls of early clad Washington quarters lost 80%-90% of their money. Maybe there&#039;s a great hoard of unsearched rolls of clad quarters out there somewhere, but I doubt it. If you can find <b>truly </b>unsearched OBW rolls of early clad quarters, I would buy them. Also, and I don&#039;t know this for a fact, but I would think clad coinage might not hold up to environmental damage as well as silver coins (but I could be wrong on that).</p><p><br /></p><p>I just checked NGC POP reports for Washington quarters. As you look down the page and your eyes go from pre1965 to 1965 and beyond, the graded populations drop off by an order of magnitude. Now, that could be just because folks don&#039;t feel clad coins are worth grading...or it could mean there&#039;s <b>just not that many of them out there</b>. One reason clad coins don&#039;t receive much attention (imo) may be due to the <b>perceived </b>large number of Mint sets released. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Let&#039;s break it down...</b></p><p><br /></p><p>From 1965 to 1967 no US Mint sets were released. Special Mint Sets were released, but they were somewhere between Uncs and Proofs. I doubt&nbsp; a grading company would mistake a SMS coin for a business strike.</p><p><br /></p><p>From 1968 to 1971 the US Mint sets contained 40% silver half dollars. Many of these sets were broken up to get at the half dollar. In fact, the 1970 US Mint set is the only place you can find the 1970-D Kennedy half dollar. </p><p><br /></p><p>Take it from someone who&#039;s gone through quite a number of these sets...<b>the US Mint took no special care handling Mint set coins!!! </b>If you get an MS-64 out of one of these sets...you&#039;re lucky!</p><p><br /></p><p>Another reason why I think <b>folks rely on the population of Mint sets </b>as a reason not to get excited about these coins is because of the popularity of the 1982-1983 issues. About a billion quarters were made each year from 1976 to 2001. However, the US Mint didn&#039;t release any Mint sets in 1982 and 1983 and prices shot up. Souvenir Sets were sold at each Mint&#039;s gift shop, but you had to visit the Mint to buy them.</p><p><br /></p><p>I search &quot;Washington Quarters 1965-1998&quot; on eBay (<b>auctions, only</b>) with the following filter...</p><p><br /></p><p>(ms66, ms67, ms68, ms69, ms70) (PCGS, NGC) -pr* -pf*</p><p><br /></p><p>...and get 47 hits. I gotta say...there are some tremendous buys out there and <b>I agree with TC...now&#039;s the time to scarf them up</b>.</p><p><br /></p><p>There&#039;s a number of <b>NGC graded MS67</b>&#039;s that are the top-POP with less than 30 graded at that level...and they&#039;re <b>selling for less than $5</b>...that&#039;s Nuts!! ...and people complain there aren&#039;t any great eBay deals out there anymore. I don&#039;t think there are as many surviving MS67 and higher clad quarters from 1965-1990 out there as people may think. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>MS-68? Fergetaboutit!!!</b>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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