Age Of The Ridiculously Large Mint Mark
Manifest_Destiny
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The San Francisco liberty seated no motto quarters from 1855-1865 (none were issued in 1863) feature a mink mark disproportionately large compared to the font size of the legend. The no motto half dollar mint mark is also large. The 1859-s dollar is more proportional. I'm not sure if anyone has studied it, but I wonder if the same "S" punch was used for all three denominations.
Here's my run of quarters. Despite it's reputation (and price), the 60-s isn't nearly as rare as the 64-s, which I consider the rarest no motto S mint quarter. I have since replaced the 65-s with a better coin which I'm still waiting on from a recent sub.
There's also an interesting large S over small S variety in 1856. I'm not sure what punch the small S was used for, probably the quarter eagle or gold dollar.
Comments
SF was obviously proud of their coins and the mint mark says so!
bob
vegas baby!
Nice run of "S" quarters! I'm not sure what led the San Francisco mint to switch to a much smaller mintmark in 1866, but it was a dramatic change. Here is my run of 1855-1865 "S" mint quarters for comparison.
@rhedden Awesome!
Don and Rhedden,
Awesome runs of large S mm liberty seated quarters! Here's my group.
This is a great idea for a thread. Love it.
I love the quarters and the mintmarks! It is so great to be able to see posts about something other than 1881-S Morgan Dollars or microscopic modern "varieties" and "errors".
Crusty coin I like 👍
@Crepidodera Nice original coins! The 64-s is exceptional!
Thanks Don. I agree with you about the 64-S quarter being the rarest of the group.
Doug
Not to hijack, but how about some big O's...
fka renman95, Sep 2005, 7,000 posts
Could you imagine how much these coins would be worth if the San Francisco Mint closed permanently in 1906 after the earthquake?
"You can't get just one gun." "You can't get just one tattoo." "You can't get just one 1796 Draped Bust Large Cent."
Back in the late 1990s, a group of raw coins in a leather pouch walked into my local B&M shop in the Finger Lakes region. It came back from California in the 1890s. Everything in it was "S" mintmarked outside of a couple of gold coins, but all of the coins had decomposing bits of leather stuck to them and the dreaded leather bag toning, which is another word for heavy, brownish-black patina that garners the "environmental damage" label more often than not. If you want to talk about original coins, it was hard to beat this find, still in the pouch. The contents included an 1864-S quarter in Unc. with luster shining through the brown stuff in places. There was no price for the coin in the Red Book at the time because it was unknown in Unc. I will never forget the sight of that coin, which was already "spoken for," because another collector who got a part time job behind the counter got in line ahead of me. Broken hearted, I left with no 1864-S quarter, nor did I get the two 1865-S halves in AU58 and Unc. I wonder what happened to that quarter, because the purchaser turned out to be a bit faint at heart, and he demanded that the shop owner buy back his entire collection at a 25% or more mark-up not long thereafter. I never saw any of those coins come back to the shop because I had moved away, but I can verify that the coin intercepter behind the counter disappeared for good.
Here's an example of the small S used on the "with motto" quarters of 1866-1877 (none issued in 1870). This is my favorite era for San Francisco quarters. The 72-s is rare for sure but like the 60-s, I think it's overrated, especially compared to the 66-s which I think is the rarest of this group.
The 1874-s reaches a nadir, becoming ridiculously small.
In 1875 a medium S was introduced and the 1875-1877 quarters can be found with both a small and medium S.
My new 65-s. Nice original VF25 which replaces the details-cleaned coin above.
It was not just a large mintmark on silver coinage but also the gold coinage - this is from the first year of the San Francisco mint in 1854. In this instance the mintmark almost looks as though it is upside down. I personally like the big mintmarks, they are easy to see. On the other hand the SF mint was using micro-mintmarks later on and they are hard to discern.
I think I have seen larger mintmarks on Mercury Dimes than on some $20 Gold. It's weird to see such differences.
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Thanks guys for posting those great runs of quarters!
None of mine have mint marks, since the branch mints didn’t exist yet.
My 1857-S $20 has the large mint mark:
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My Dahlonega dollar also does compared to the small size of the coin:
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Just got this N30 as an upgrade for the P12 above. It should cross to P20-25.
Except weren't the mintmarks placed by the Philly die shop before the (unhardened) dies were sent out?
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lol, forgot that!
bob
vegas, baby!
Here's the reverse of my 1856-S Eagle, it was also struck with a smaller mintmark. This larger mint mark variety is the less common of the two.
it's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide
Love threads like this. I don’t collect these, so it’s a great learning experience. Thanks to all of you who posted!
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Never measured but maybe same size on both dollars.
?????
Nothing got wasted back then
My only S mint. For now.
Throw a coin enough times, and suppose one day it lands on its edge.
A few giant S to add to the mix.
Cracked and submitted raw. VF25. I'm pretty happy with this one. It's a tough coin to find nice.
Several upgrades since the original post 6 months ago. Latest is the VF35 64-s. Here's the current lineup.
VF25
VF20
VF30
VF30
VF25
VF25
VF20
VF25
VF35
VF25
Very nice Don!
First, nice collection of quarters!
The mint marks were all applied in Philadelphia, where there was an ample supply of letter punches of various sizes for making medal dies. Could be there was no dedicated mint mark punch until you start seeing the smaller ones on all denominations in 1866. The smaller mint marks would have been much easier to punch into the dies than the larger ones given the far smaller surface area. Maybe it took 28 years to figure that out. Maybe the engraver doing medals was tired of someone stealing his S punch. CC coming online in 1870 would have presented a problem finding space to use a giant C punch twice. I'm sure somewhere there's a documented reason for ending use of the large punches.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Thanks!
There's a 56-S/s large S over small s, so they had one available at least by 1856-s. It would be interesting to know why they decided to use the large punch.
My guess for the large punch was to show pride of the fact they had a new mint. Just supposition though. James
Interesting. I imagine the reason behind the large punch was because someone decided it looked better.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Great coins !
I thought, for sure, this was going to be a war nickel thread......
I just won this XF40 upgrade. Anyone familiar with the 59-s knows it's a major condition rarity with no known uncirculated examples and anything XF or AU being extremely rare. It seems like a nice original coin. I hope it looks as good in hand.
So cool to see these all together, all original looking!
Some great Liberty Seated quarters in this thread; thanks for posting them!
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Oh, I thought I'd find some ridiculously large mint marks in this thread. And no one posted the largest of all?
