The newest thread about the dollar coin and the worth of various coins as collector’s items reminded me of something a friend once told me.
According to him, the 1975 quarter is VERY rare, and should you ever come across one you should cherish it. Per said friend, the reason for the value is that the only quarters minted in 1975 were for collector sets, none for general circulation. The theory being that they knew they were going to mint a ton of them for the bicentennial so they figured they could skip a year.
Any numismatists out there that know the straight dope on this?
No, there’s no truth to that. It sounds like your friend may have been thinking of the 1970 half dollar, though. No Philadelphia ones were minted, the Denver ones were for mint sets, the San Francisco ones were for proof sets, none were for circulation. I’m not sure how much they’re worth offhand, not a whole lot, but definitely more than face value. As a guess, maybe $2-3 for San Francisco, $10-15 for Denver.
Any idea where I can find stats on the number of quarters minted by year? I would like to be able to show my friend as he’ll never believe me otherwise.
Hmm, I guess I’ll just keep the post count going on my own thread.
A search on AskJeeves brought me to this site that lists the number of Washington Quarters minted per year. 1975 is not listed at all. I guess they’re VERY rare!
This information comes from the FAQ published by the Department of the Treasury, so it looks like their were no quarters issued with a 1975 date. Nonexistant definitely qualifies as very rare.
Keith
I don’t know where to look on the web (odd they were left out of that list you found), but you can look up the mintage in any coin price guide. Probably the easiest ones to find at a bookstore would be the Red Book, or the monthly magazine Coin Prices or Coin Price Value Guide, I can’t remember what it’s called, though I imagine there’s more than one.
The same site I found also has list of the number of proof sets by year, and there are some made for 1975. Damn, I can’t believe my friend may be right about something! I’m sure not going to tell him
I remember hearing that the Bicentennial quarters, which were dated 1776-1976, were minted for an 18 month period. So I’m guessing that in 1975 they had started minting the Bicentenial quarters, although they weren’t released until 1976.
Wow, it looks like I am replying to eleven year old posts; we have in our possession a very genuine looking Washington quarter dated 1975, so the collector set theory sounds plausible to me.
