Yesterday I created a thread about the Capped Bust, Lettered Edge Half Dollar. Today I'll cover the quarter. This coin was also design by John Reich, starting in 1815. There was a gap in the quarter series from 1808 until 1814. The reason was that those who deposited silver at the Philadelphia Mint for coinage got to order the coins they wanted. Those orders were overwhelmingly for half dollars. The total mintages from the Capped Bust, Lettered Edge Half Dollar was 82,119,124 from 1807 to 1836. The Capped Bust, Large Size Quarter mintage was only 1,834,584. To be fair, the type did change to the Small Diameter Quarter in 1831, but the mintage for those pieces was only 4.2 million, which was still way below the half dollar output. The coin above now rests in an NGC AU-58 holder. It's quite nice, but is the lowest grade silver type coin I have among the Capped Bust half dimes, dimes, quarters and half dollars in my collection. The other three coins grade MS-64+ or 65. Upgrading this piece to that level would take some doing and quite a bit of cash. It's interesting how times have changed. Covid seems to have killed the demand for all coins to a great degree. Before Covid, the quarter was the workhorse denomination and the half dollars were so unpopular that none of them were made for circulation for years. When I was kid in the 1950s and '60s, you saw half dollars in circulation, and they were often worn. Still you saw far more dimes and quarters. The half dollar disappeared from circulation when the JFK type was introduced in 1964.
Not sure if I agree with that. When I worked at an ice cream parlor in high school, circa 1975, I pulled probably 50 Kennedy halves from circulation and at least a couple Franklins. I spent all the non-silver ones in 1983 when I was broke, and they circulated again.
I can never remember ever getting a JFK half in circulation. I have seen many of them in family hoards when people asked me in to buy coins. I told them to take the non silver ones to the bank because they had no collector value.
I used to see JFK halves in the casinos, but never in general circulation really. No slot in the cash drawer for them. But I like the write up @johnmilton - informative.
As I recall, I have never owned one in any grade higher than VF25 (and I don't have a picture of that).
The large diameter CB quarters are tough to find nice even in the lower circ grades that I can afford.
