1965 Washington Quarters - How long will they last?
bohica268
Posts: 478 ✭
After 40 years the ones I am finding in change for the most part grade GOOD to VERY GOOD. Some are damaged but many just show the signs of heavy use. Has the U.S. Mint (or anyone else) published anything about how long these coins will last?
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Comments
Maybe we'll never again see coins worn down to Fair condition.
New collectors, please educate yourself before spending money on coins; there are people who believe that using numismatic knowledge to rip the naïve is what this hobby is all about.
I think the standard age is 30 years but I don't see why they won't last 50+
Jim
peacockcoins
With the change from Wheat design to Lincoln Memorial all of the 40's and 50's coins were basically pulled around 1970 give or take, so many never got to see that much circ like the 10's and 20's lincolns. The removal of silver from dimes, quaters and halves basically took them out of play too soon as well and the earlier series like Merc's, SLQ, and WLH were pulled out even earlier in most cases. I thought nickels(even though harder metal) could be an example to show what a Poor 1/fair 2 circulated coin (that remains in circ) would look like as up till 10 years ago, it was not uncommon to find 41 nickels and a few 50's in change, but even now they seem to have vanished from everyday commerce. The 38, 39, and war years disappeared prior to that.
The 65 66 and 67 and other washington quarters basically have no value other than face in heavy circulated condition and I see no real reason why they would be pulled from circulation in the foreseeable future, so as long as we are still using actual change in commerce, we should still see them around in another 30 years plus. Thats 70 years of wear? It will be intresting to see whats left of them?? Will the copper core be exposed? Will they be two thin to even work vending machines?
It will be like some of those extremely worn out super thin barber quarters and dimes you see ?
I'd pay $100.00 plus your $15. slabbing fees if someone could get a clad Washington quarter into a PCGS FA02 or lower holder.
Have you sent any in for grading and if so what was the result?
Looking for PCGS AU58 Washington's, 32-63.
and abused have also changed. In the early 1960's quarters recieved most of their wear from
being "jingled" with other coins in pockets and to a lesser extent from sliding across counters
and being dropped in change tills and pocketbooks. Much of the wear for individual coins was
highly episodic and occurred in the pockets of workmen doing heavy labor. This type of wear
tended to have a sort of polishing effect and would remove the silver metal in neat even layers
from the high points of the coin and make the coins look smooth and clean most of the time.
Since the coins were of nice soft silver this wear would progress at a relatively rapid pace. 1932
quarters often were worn to AG or even fair condition by 1960 which was only 28 years. Today
after nearly 39 years of circulation even the worst of the 1965 quarters tend to be higher grade
than the average 28 year old silver was.
While they may be higher grade, they tend to not look as good. Their first problem is that the
copper nickel is much harder to coin than the silver was and in the early years the mint used
dies long past the end of their useful life. The resultant horrid strikes tend to just look more
worn as the clues of their weak detail wear away and the eye begins to attribute their condition
to wear rather than what's usually the real culprit- - strike.
Few people still do much physical work and coins tend to spend more time in jars and sock dra-
wers than circulating in commerce. More men carry change purses or simply don't carry change
at all except what's accumulated over the course of the day. Coins are more likely to pass hand
to hand or hand to machine than they were in the 1960's. They are also counted far more often
by machine than ever before. It is here, in machines, where coins (especially quarters) recieve
most of their wear. Rather than being polished and the surfaces being sloughed of by blunt con-
tact they are being eaten alive by an accumulation of tiny scratches imparted by the machines.
Silver coins were never pulled out of circulation because of extreme wear on a wholesale basis
in this country because they tended to get pulled out by collectors before they reached the ex-
treme metal loss at which the government had to act. They did always remove some coin be-
cause they were cull, ugly, or underweight, but as a general rule these were always few in num-
ber and did not involve large numbers of heavily worn silver coin. Heavily worn coin (of any type)
tends to have lost about 3% of the original weight. Other countries who have had to recoin
a denomination tended to wait until it had lost 4% and some coins would be virtually unrecogniz-
able.
The clad coins will almost certainly never get to this point for several reasons. Chief among them
is that they'll be lost to fire, flood, electric furnaces, and landfills long before they have so much
wear. Battelle Institute said in 1976 that the life expectancy of the quarter was about 30 years.
Right around half of the original mintages are apparently missing from circulation today. It has
been only in the last few years that any real numbers of the early coins have been getting pull-
ed out by collectors and compared to the original mintages this still is a tiny percentage for most
dates. Other dates (like the '68-D) are showing signs of some stress due to the lower numbers
available relative to this selective demand. If inflation continues at the average rate it has been
since 1965, these coins will probably be worth more as metal than their face value in only another
thirty years anyway.
In very recent years the design (relief) has been lowered repeatedly on the new coins and even
the planchet thickness was lowered in '99 (quarters only) to match the wear on the existing coin.
After thirty more years of wear all the clad quarters will likely have a great sameness in their ap-
pearance and appear almost universally worn due to these conditions.
These coins would appear to have nice honest wear if they were treated like they were in the old
days. The signs of their disuse would disappear after only a very brief time. Indeed, you'll occassion-
ally see a quarter that appears to have nice honest wear.
<< <i> Peculiar thing is I've never seen one worn through to the copper core. Has anyone else? >>
I have. I have 3 roosevelt dimes that show some copper. Odd thing is that you can still see the design on the reverse and obverse. Really built-tough coins.
Aerospace Structures Engineer
Jerry
VERY very worn coins (FR2 and PO1) will enjoy demand from at least one collector we all know, but for the most part, regular, old, common, NON RARE VARIETIES (qualification put in for cladking; rare clads will command a premium) will circulate until then and be worth 25 cents.
I agree they wear very long and hard as an alloy, probably the hardest thing on clads was slot machines, but now they work with paper bills and tickets and generate an electronic recorded "payout" (sigh)
look at Nickels, you still find every year of the Jeffs in circulation but rarely a Buff. (and when they are found, they are usually "seeded"
Liberty: Parent of Science & Industry
<< <i>In addition to being cheaper to manufacture, the clad coins do last longer because the clad composition is harder than the silver coins they replaced. Surprisingly, though, I've pulled many 90% silver coins from circulation that actually looked BETTER than some of the early clad coins out there. I've seen clads down around G at worst, unless they've been damaged. I've yet to see one worn smooth or nearly smooth. I would think that the federal reserve orders banks to return badly worn coins for destruction and replacement just like they do with paper notes, so you probably won't see many worn below G in the future. >>
It's highly improbable that any silver coin has remained in circulation longer than a couple years
since 1970. The chances of any individual recipient removing them because of their silver content
is simply too high. At any given time there are only a few million of the silver quarters in circulation
and these will not be the same ones for the main part because they tend to migrate to stronger
hands. Their circulation is also impeded by the fact that most vending machines will not accept them.
Many, no doubt, end up in the garbage because their owner can't get a machine to accept them.
The government redeemed very few silver coins because of the loss associated by paying face value
for less value in metal. Even when these coins were highly worn there was very little redemption.
It seems less likely they'll be quick to remove clads coins which generally contain even less value in
metal. Also the costs associated with minting coins is a much greater portion of total unit production
costs than in the past. This cost is not only unrecoverable but a new coin must be made to replace
any that are removed so this cost is borne "again".
The condition of the early clads is often highly dependent on your definitions of grades. Many of these
early ones were made so poorly that the lettering, especially on the reverse, was flat all the way to
the rim. Off the die these were poorly made MS-60's but as soon as they hit circulation a good argument
could b made that they were AG since the lettering was worn into the rim. More than 90% of many dates
will have this wear before the coin even gets to what would otherwise be F condition.
I've never seen a clad quarter with the copper core showing which wasn't apparently played with. Some-
times there will be copper showing on the rim on the side toward where the planchet was cut, but these
were likely scraped or filed and the signs hidden by wear.
Baley: Five years ago there was an outside chance that common heavily worn clad might someday be-
come worth a premium, but recently enough of these (mostly nicer F's and VF's) have been pushed
into coin folders that this is no longer a real possibility. Certainly it wouldn't be surprising to see pre-
miums develope for some common date non variety clad quarters all the way down to nice attractive VG.
Finding nice attractive '68-D's is really getting to be a chore. They are out there but so many are rejects
because of damage and poor strikes. The '69 is another date which is exceedingly difficult to find nice.
While VG's are generally findable for this one, they are nearly impossible in F.
The 1965 quarter was heavily hoarded initially and many of these have trickled into circulation over the
years. Large quantities of these were accidently hoarded by the fed also since they didn't start rotat-
ing their stocks of coin until 1972. The last of these didn't get out of storage until 1975. Also many peo-
have an interest in first year coinage so this date does sit out of circulation more than most ('76 is higher).
It's not unusual to find XF/AU '65 quarters though they are getting more unusual every year. Curiously
the '67 can be found in XF but the '66 is tough above F.