Washington Eagle Reverse Quarters

Putting the number one billion in perspective helps understand how the many billions of these made can still be found.

You probably cannot count to one billion in your lifetime. One billion seconds is 33 1/3 years, and most people don't have the time in life to set all other things aside in life to try.

One billion minutes ago was the time of Jesus Christ.

There were 1,819,717,540 quarters made in 1965. They each are .068 inches thick.

Stacking them on edge would give a stack 123740792.72 inches or 1852.98 miles high.

With a width of .995 inches, the 1965 quarters laid side by side would cover 27,427.88 miles. The earth's circumference at the equator is only about 24,874 miles according to google.

And that's just from 1965. Granted, that was a high mintage year also.

Assuming your math is otherwise correct, I believe it's interesting that these coins are almost all worn down to VG or lower condition now days. Well, the 47% of them that actually survive today in any condition are almost all heavily worn.

This will have a dramatic impact on how high they stack. It would be only about 41% of how high they stacked when they were new. It's also far more difficult to stack heavily worn coins because both sides become increasingly convex so they tend to topple. When new you might have been able to stack 60 or 70 but it's harder now.

The length of then side by side isn't decreased significantly except that there are so "few" left.

I suspect the government is finally removing heavily worn coins because the incidence of these older quarters has been plummeting for the last three years or so.

I am beginning to doubt that the "modern" obsolete designs (introduced after 1958 and retired before 2010) will *ever* fetch more than face value for average circulated specimens. There are too many, the collector base is dwindling too rapidly, and the growth potential is nowhere close to the inflation rate.

Specific to quarters, the eagle reverses probably are not being hoarded because quartets are non-inconsequential coins. A $10 roll is a decent bit of money to put aside, and they are universally accepted for emergencies- vending machines, phone booths, car air pumps etc. My mom is the "hoard everything different" type, but even she lost steam on quarters by about 2003.

Interesting discussion.

I certainly see more classic reverse (-1998) quarters in my change, but the percentage of ATB and Statehood/Territorial/DC quarters has definitely been increasing over time.

This will vary only a little by federal reserve district but in the Chicago district only 41% of the circulating quarters were made before 1999. This number is dropping much faster than I predicted. I believe it's because quarter velocity is slowing further and people are losing more coins. There is apparently some limited collection formation of these considering nice examples are disappearing prefentially to typical examples.

I haven't seen a nice AU of any date in over a year. Old VF's are getting very infrequent.