My Latest Column: On Collecting Bicentennial Quarters,..

Nice article. Thanks.

I think part of the reason people don't notice the huge gaping strike flaw on the drum of most coins is that these come so extremely well made. Dies were swapped out more and more care was taken with them all the way around. Since nice gemmy coins are easy and considered common people don't look closely enough to see few of them even show the entire drum.

I'd best get my glasses checked as I missed the thread though.

The bicentennial quarters were hoarded in enormous numbers. Despite the enormous mintages they only appear in circulation sporadically. The number of pristine examples have been whittled down tremendously but still more than 10,000,000 of each mint mark survive plus the 3,000,000 plus in mint sets. Among the 1.3 billion surviving the majority are in XF and AU and are sitting in hoards. At any given time only about 30% are in circulation and this number used to be much lower.

But the number of gems with full drums was simply never very high. While these coins come very very nice, very very few were made as gems with full drums and over the years there are fewer of these than ever. They get no attention because collectors assume they are common.

Of course there are tens of thousands so they aren't rare and there's no certainty they'llever be sought. But these are US coins and one year type and if collectors ever seek the finest examples they'll find they are not so easy as they assume. I wouldn't suggest people pay high prices to get them and no one should ever invest in coins but it's hard to believe one can go far wrong setting aside nice attractive gems for the day that people do care.