US Quarters Collection 1990-Present

I've been away for quite some time from this forum but I've been doing a little bit of collecting. My latest hunt is to fill my collection with the last 30yrs of quarters.. I know it's going to be a big task due to all of the specialty quarters that have come out over the last several years. Any suggestions on how to get started?

I have over $400 is unsearched circulated quarters that I'll start going thru over the next few weeks, but wanted to get your ideas on what I should be focusing on as I don't want to miss anything (key dates, rare mint marks, etc.)

 

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Get out your current Red Book and see what would be required for a complete set.
You'd probably have to buy the proofs but the business strikes you could do from circulation (unless you want UNC coins).

 

That's a pretty big task your setting out to complete. IMO you can do it on a modest budget because you'll probably have to buy the Clad Proofs, Silver Proofs, Satin finish coins from 2005 through 2010 and others I may have left out. I wish you all the success in the world. If it were me, I'd start out buying the coin folders and try to fill them first before moving on to the rest. Good Luck.

 

Mine runs from 1965-present complete except for this year's Ds which I will find at some point this year I think.

How are you collecting? Are you trying to do it from circulation and just P+D mintmarks?
Are you doing proofs, clad and silver proof also?
Will you be doing the W mintmarks quarters since 2019 also?

As far as keeping an eye out going through circulation quarters, keep an eye out for W mintmarks since 2019. Then you should give each coin a once over for anything odd doubling, cuds, clash marks, interesting die chips. There's a whole lot of things really in the last 30 years. I look at everything and only save what I find interesting or is dramatic enough.

The only thing you can't do from circulation are the satin finish coins of 2005-2010 from the mint sets. But you don't have to really do those either, up to you. Then there's the S mint "uncirculated finish" that were sold by the mint and start in 2012...

I buy the mint set, proof set and silver proof set each year, and get my P+D and Ws from circulation and pre-covid would seach $500-$1000 a week to upgrade my circulation set that I roll hunt.

So, if you are doing P+D only and business strikes, they are all out there, the hardest ones are 2010-2011-2012 which are lower mintage years. You'll find them here or there but finding nice ones can be a challenge and the 2010 mint set being satin finish doesn't make it easier, you can buy the 2011 and 2012 mint set and it's the same thing and have nice examples. 2010 you have to find it.
Still, they will all turn up roll searching.

I'd say get a redbook for the mintages but you can find the info online also with a bit more work.

As far as the 2019 and 2020 W mint mark quarters, they were only released in circulation and only 2 million of each design struck. You can buy an example on ebay for like $5 or so for most of them newest releases sell for more, harder to find sell for more. The low mintage quarters of 2010-11-12 were like 35 million struck of each for comparison.

Good luck. Really depends on how far you are going with the collection. You don't "need" the w mint mark side set, or the S mint uncirculated finish side set, or the proof finish coins. Your decisions to make on how much you want to collect of it.

 

Thank you all for your amazing replies. I'd really like to collect everything (wouldn't we all) but I think for now I'm going to focus on circulated quarters and getting as complete of a set as possible from roll/change hunting until I reach a point where I'd like to get into mint/proof sets. I've never been super into error coins (except for the value) but I'll keep my eyes open as I'm searching.

Thanks for the heads up on the W mint marks and years to look out for. I typically collect for keeps and don't intend to sell anything unless it's to finance the purchase of more coins.. but even then unless I have duplicates of something I tend to just hang on to everything.

I think my biggest problem is having a large collection already, it's very un-organized so it can be hard to know what I've already got.. but I do know that I'm safe with the quarters because I don't have much on that side of things, so this will be fun.

I'll try to come back here and let you guys/gals know of my finds as I'm searching and filling my collection.