The SLQ--Such A Short Issue

The Washington commemorative idea was intended to be a commemorative half dollar, as Washington fever was hitting the US again in the late 20s-early 30s with the coming of the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Congress (and President Hoover) by that time were pretty upset as commemoratives simply were not wanted by the public, especially with the country sinking deeper into the Great Depression by the day; the Oregon Trail half-dollar controversy (also a really neat story) didn't help matters at all.

That being the case, it was decided to see which coin could be most conveniently replaced with the least amount of fuss. The rule was that the design could not be changed for twenty-five years, which meant that pretty much all of the then-current circulating US coin designs could have been dumped. The SLQ looked good: not only were quarters not circulating widely by 1930, the series had been run through with problems since it launched, from the exposed breast controversy (chainmail-gate?) to striking issues to the date wear problem. So the commemoration was changed to use the quarter.

Laura Gardin Fraser (wife of James Fraser of Buffalo nickel fame) designed what was/is considered a great work of art for the new commemorative quarter, but Andrew Mellon's deep-seated resentment of women -- perhaps due to the scandal of his wife's affair and divorce 20 years before? -- ensured that a woman's work had no chance of ever being selected for the final design, the Committee of Fine Arts' recommendation being ignored in favor of Flanagan's soon-to-be-famous design.

That being said, the SLQ was mostly picked because it was an easy target, as most of the issues with design, striking, and wear had been pretty well resolved by 1930. The coin wasn't a smash hit with the public, partly due to the perception that the eagle on the reverse was sickly/weak and not accurately represented, and partly due to the whole exposed-breast controversy, which had church leaders calling for boycotts and threatening to file obscenity charges against members of Congress and/or have them recalled by elections. Meanwhile, there was a delay while the obverse was re-designed, and by the time the coin was back out in circulation in 1917, it wasn't nearly as popular as the Mercury dime or Walking Liberty half.

One of the great ironies, at least to me, is that what is arguably Flanagan's weakest work artistically of his entire (otherwise quite impressive) career, including his studies under St. Gaudens and his design for the Verdun medal, is what ended up gracing our quarters, and is still doing so, for almost 85 years; being a design which is inferior in terms of artistic merit and aesthetics when compared to the design of the SLQ it replaced.

Adam this comes up often - is there any contemporaneous evidence of the furore? I thought the mint made the changes as part of the whole adjustments to the design so it struck up better.

I'm confused about this part. How could they replace the SLQ if the design was only 16 years old?

Yes, we have had this come up before. It is a myth..

http://goccf.com/t/258658#2181120
http://goccf.com/t/258658#2181839

Great background info. Thanks Adam, Conder and others.

I'll have to find sources tonight, but I remember a presentation (back in the slide era!) given awhile back which had clippings from a Philadelphia newspaper, editorializing on the issue.

Thanks for correcting the other mistakes in my original post, I'm working off 20-30 years of retained "memory", much of which is probably damaged ;)

I should mention that what I meant when I said "not circulating widely" was that the Mint was not anticipating the need to strike a large amount of quarters heading into 1931. There was still a more than adequate mintage of 1930-dated quarters, which were not in demand from banks, as there were already enough quarters in circulation to meet the demands of businesses and the public. In other words, it wasn't likely that there was going to be an immediate need to increase the mintages. Fortunately, the high mintage and low demand resulted in lots of really nice higher grade 1930-dated SLQ's to collect!

The truth of why such coins are dropped from mintage is the Mint just doesn't want people keeping all that change from circulating. So as soon as they find a design that people like, they change it to something people don't like. Proof is look at all the present coins now being produced.