Looking at a whole mess of 'Bama quarters today
FC57Coins
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I went to the bank this morning, and on a whim I asked the teller if she had any Alabama quarters, and she said she did, so I went ahead and got 15 rolls. So far I've been through 5 of the rolls, and the overall quality is much better than what I saw in last year's quarters. Nice full strikes and good luster. However, there haven't been any gems yet. Out of the rolls I've looked through, just about every Washington side has marks - probably from counter machines. I've been able to cull out maybe 3 that MIGHT make it to MS67, but the rest are MS65 stuff and below. Hopefully I'll get to see at least one lucky contestant that somehow managed to escape unscathed. I've noticed everything from semi-prooflike surfaces, to orange-peely stressed die surfaces, but again, the strikes seem to be pretty nice. Helen Keller has quite a bit of detail. Stay tuned!
Frank
Frank
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I went through 16 rolls of these things and I found about 2 roll's worth of the one's with the die crack on Washington's forehead, although some of the obverses were so beat up that you really couldn't tell the difference. One of the coins looked like it got caught in a counter and had part of the face planed off. Overall I'd say that the quality of the coins (16 from the bank and 1 from the mint) was pretty good - but not super. The reverses on a lot of the coins were immaculate, only to turn them around and find dings and cuts all over George's face. Some of the coins had semi-prooflike surfaces, but alot of the coins had an orange peel look. As mentioned - the obverses were much worse than the reverses for some reason, and because the design is so wide open, I speculate that this is going to be an issue that in a couple of years will be tough to find in pristine condition unless hoarded. Of those which I found with the die crack, there were all types, from short, just begining, to well into Washington's forehead, but again, the size of the crack is only 1/4 inch at most so we're not talking anything earthshattering. I was able to cull out about 25/640 coins that I looked at, which had clean enough surfaces and bright enough luster to maybe warrant a 67 on the first pass. I'll look at them tomorrow again and probably eliminate a third to a half of them. I'm not going to send them in unless for some unknown reason nothing grades higher, but I would imagine that with the quality of these roll quarters, once the mint sets come out, there should be some real gems in there.
The only error that I found (other than a couple of machine doubled coins) was one where serveral letters of the legend, several letters of the motto, and the mint mark were barely legible. You had to turn to coin into the light to see the lettering. I'm guessing this is a grease filled die problem - I'll try to take some pictures of the coin tomorrow.
Anyone need a roll or five of gone through once Alabamas?
Frank