Washington Silver Quarter History

Dug13

Just read a short article in Coinweek about Washington Quarters.
It stated the silver versions were struck from 1932 to 1966. Silver quarters struck in 1965 and 1966 were antedated 1964. The final “1964” silver quarter was struck in January 1966.
The article does not tell why the Mint did this. Does anyone know the history behind this occurrence?

ricko

That is interesting. I did not know this... Perhaps our resident experts can give us further information to explain why it was done. Cheers, RickO

smuglr

Posted October 16, 2006 by cladking on NGC hope it helps

This gets pretty complicated so please bear with me. There is a unique 1964 clad quarter. There are some ten or twelve 1965 silver quarters. There are a similar number of '65 silver dimes. There is apparently at least one '66 silver dime.

Now comes the tricky part. About .25% of 1964-D quarters were struck with a 1965 reverse. There are a handfull of '65 clad quarters struck with both silver reverse dies and type "b" dies. All three of the mintmarkless quarters (and dimes) were also struck with SMS dies for inclusion in sets and by retired SMS dies for circulation at the San Francisco mint. The cents, nickels, and halfs were probably struck with SMS dies as well for circulation but I can't recall having seen them.

This was a very difficult era for the mint. When the '64 coins went into production there was a date freeze in effect and it wasn't known what would replace silver. When the coinage act of 1965 was adopted it was believed that minting both silver and clad would help keep silver in circulation and mitigate the coin shortage. This probably worked to some extent and the '65 date was supposed to be used forever for all future issues. The huge number of new clads enterring circulation eased the shortage so that by mid 1966 they did start using the '66 date. It would have been a madhouse at the mint during this period trying to keep all the, planchets, dies (obverse and reverse), and metals separate while producing coins full out with extra shifts. And the least of their worries wasn't the new clad material which took them years to achieve a good strike with reasonable die life.

thisistheshow

AFAIK, our government did this to maintain the impression that silver coinage was still prevalent in circulation -as alluded to by that info from @cladking

USSID17

@smuglr said:
Posted October 16, 2006 by cladking on NGC hope it helps

This gets pretty complicated so please bear with me. There is a unique 1964 clad quarter. There are some ten or twelve 1965 silver quarters. There are a similar number of '65 silver dimes. There is apparently at least one '66 silver dime.

Now comes the tricky part. About .25% of 1964-D quarters were struck with a 1965 reverse. There are a handfull of '65 clad quarters struck with both silver reverse dies and type "b" dies. All three of the mintmarkless quarters (and dimes) were also struck with SMS dies for inclusion in sets and by retired SMS dies for circulation at the San Francisco mint. The cents, nickels, and halfs were probably struck with SMS dies as well for circulation but I can't recall having seen them.

This was a very difficult era for the mint. When the '64 coins went into production there was a date freeze in effect and it wasn't known what would replace silver. When the coinage act of 1965 was adopted it was believed that minting both silver and clad would help keep silver in circulation and mitigate the coin shortage. This probably worked to some extent and the '65 date was supposed to be used forever for all future issues. The huge number of new clads enterring circulation eased the shortage so that by mid 1966 they did start using the '66 date. It would have been a madhouse at the mint during this period trying to keep all the, planchets, dies (obverse and reverse), and metals separate while producing coins full out with extra shifts. And the least of their worries wasn't the new clad material which took them years to achieve a good strike with reasonable die life.

That works for me.

batumi

@thisistheshow said:
AFAIK, our government did this to maintain the impression that silver coinage was still prevalent in circulation -as alluded to by that info from @cladking

I recall LBJ saying at the time that silver coins would circulate side by side with the new slugs. I, being the ripe old age of ten at the time, did not buy that line of BS!

cladking

@thisistheshow said:
AFAIK, our government did this to maintain the impression that silver coinage was still prevalent in circulation -as alluded to by that info from @cladking

LBJ said that silver and clad would circulate side by side forever in an attempt to stop the public from hoarding it as the mint cranked out the new coins trying to fill a void. It probably worked to some extent and 1964 dimes were made into 1967.

But by the summer of 1968 the FED was separating and removing silver from circulation and this continued until mid-'69. They ceased because the amount of silver had become so low that it wasn't worth running through the very simple separators. Coins were simply rolled down inclines.

I doubt officials knew how quickly the silver would disappear but that was largely because they didn't realize how quickly silver prices would go up. This was one of the first waves of inflation caused by deficit spending coupled with the perception that silver was more scarce than was known.

Since then we've mined many billions of ounces of silver and consumed even more. Deficit spending has increased so wildly that now a few trillion dollar shortfall seems tame where we used to measure dollars in millions. A silver quarter contains ~$4.80 worth of silver and would cost a staggering 8c just to mint. All the silver in the world isn't worth much even in aggregate.

The new ugly slugs were adding insult to injuery for the millions of coin collectors who continued collecting even after the government tried to stop it. Of course it was wholly unfair to blame collectors for the coin shortage as can be seen in the mintages of 1965 coinage. It was dime and quarter mintages that soared not the pennies and nickels that were most popular with collectors. The Great Coin Shortage of 1964 was caused almost solely by the effect of deficit spending on silver prices.

joeykoins

Like explained above and by cladking, this process at the time had to be flat out nerve wracking? To think, all these issues happening all at the same time. Esp. The fact about the "No 1965 proofs" being decided. Then throw in the new, "SMS sets". Naturally, one or two or... workers are and did make mistakes concerning the silver issue! The chaos was probably everyday? Us error and variety guys and gals, should thank the Mint for coming up with this insane decision.

thisistheshow

@cladking said:

@thisistheshow said:
AFAIK, our government did this to maintain the impression that silver coinage was still prevalent in circulation -as alluded to by that info from @cladking

LBJ said that silver and clad would circulate side by side forever in an attempt to stop the public from hoarding it as the mint cranked out the new coins trying to fill a void. It probably worked to some extent and 1964 dimes were made into 1967.

But by the summer of 1968 the FED was separating and removing silver from circulation and this continued until mid-'69. They ceased because the amount of silver had become so low that it wasn't worth running through the very simple separators. Coins were simply rolled down inclines.

I doubt officials knew how quickly the silver would disappear but that was largely because they didn't realize how quickly silver prices would go up. This was one of the first waves of inflation caused by deficit spending coupled with the perception that silver was more scarce than was known.

Since then we've mined many billions of ounces of silver and consumed even more. Deficit spending has increased so wildly that now a few trillion dollar shortfall seems tame where we used to measure dollars in millions. A silver quarter contains ~$4.80 worth of silver and would cost a staggering 8c just to mint. All the silver in the world isn't worth much even in aggregate.

The new ugly slugs were adding insult to injuery for the millions of coin collectors who continued collecting even after the government tried to stop it. Of course it was wholly unfair to blame collectors for the coin shortage as can be seen in the mintages of 1965 coinage. It was dime and quarter mintages that soared not the pennies and nickels that were most popular with collectors. The Great Coin Shortage of 1964 was caused almost solely by the effect of deficit spending on silver prices.

......

Thank you for writing all of that out. Great information.

ricko

Thanks to all above who contributed further information on this topic. It must indeed have been a tumultuous time at the Mint.... And there are likely a few treasures still out in the wild (i.e silver '65 quarters)... I will pay more attention to my change.... Cheers, RickO

Dug13

Great back story (history) of that era. I didn’t know about the silver dimes being struck later also. Thank you CladKing and others.

cladking

@ricko said:
Thanks to all above who contributed further information on this topic. It must indeed have been a tumultuous time at the Mint.... And there are likely a few treasures still out in the wild (i.e silver '65 quarters)... I will pay more attention to my change....

The effects on the hobby were simply catastrophic. In early 1964 there was a vibrant coin hobby replete with rampant speculation in band new rolls of coins. To the government the hobby was the apparent cause of the coin shortage so they did everything they could to punish us. In addition to the two dates freezes they also stopped production of both proof and mint sets and eventually condescended to allowing production of the much scorned SMS's. These sets weren't so bad but they satisfied no one because very few were of proof quality and did not represent production quality. Ironically though these sets did become the template for the later mint sets which were of similar quality at least in theory. Starting in 1968 they used the same numismatic presses at lower speeds and higher pressure with brand new dies to make mint set coins. Quality wasn't always good but the best coins were comparable to SMS issues whereas circulation issues very rarely were.

But they were hardly done here and there was even a bill proposed in Congress by senator Alan Bible to make the collecting of any coin dated after 1964 illegal. It failed passage of course but it certainly set the tone for the coin market in general and modern coin collecting specifically. It wasn't needed because nobody had any interest in the new coins, anyway. The initial date freeze in 1964 pretty much crashed most of the speculative markets in late-date classics. Where bags of things like '62-(P) nickels had had a significant premium of up to $75 this just evaporated ands there were no buyers. Things like '60-D sm dt cents lost most of their value and eventually by 2002 would become the least expensive of all memorial cent rolls and even less than the lg dt!! But the removal of silver and the date freeze imposed by the Coinage of 1965 had a much broader impact on the hobby and led to the exodus of millions of collectors. Not only were the coins in circulation ruined by these various means and the drawdown of older dates but there was no hope the coins would ever become interesting due to the date freeze and the removal of mint marks or any sort of special issues.

Even before the end of 1965 there were tiny improvements including the introduction of Special Mint Sets but it was mid-'66 before the date freeze was lifted and '68 before mint marks were restored. Mint and proof sets were also brought back in 1968.

The coins began getting a lot more interesting when it was reported in the newspapers that the mint was going to start rotating their coin stocks. Up to this time it was common to find BU rolls of old clad as they were dug out of the back of a warehouse somewhere. Very few people took up collecting moderns even as all the reasons not to just disappeared. There was (and is) a common perception that all moderns are distressingly common even in perfect condition. It was 1999 before many of the baby boomers came back to the hobby with the introduction of the states coins and some had an interest in moderns.

While silver coins are found in circulation they never circulate longer than a few weeks because they will be found or because they are not accepted by vending machines or Coinstar. The silver got into circulation in 2008 quite a bit because so many households were broken up in the mortgage crisis and then again to a smaller extent because of covid. Generally there is only about one silver coin in 10,000 but this varies over time and no silver coin stays in circulation. There is a small but finite chance you can find a 1964 clad quarter in circulation but no real chance of finding a 1965 silver quarter despite it being far more common. The single '64 clad is in a nice pleasing AU-55 and appears to have circulated for at least a couple of months.

rec78

@Dug13 said:
Just read a short article in Coinweek about Washington Quarters.
It stated the silver versions were struck from 1932 to 1966. Silver quarters struck in 1965 and 1966 were antedated 1964. The final “1964” silver quarter was struck in January 1966.

Here is a coin world article on the coinage act of 1965
https://coinworld.com/news/precious-metals/clad-coins-gerald-tebben-coin-world-1963-numismatics-circulating-coins.html