Silver Clad 1776-1976 Quarter

I need to get a battery for my little scale, and will do this.
In all ways the edge looks clad. But I have been hanging on to it for years, because it looked like it had a silver kind of tarnish. So... Alaska still being winter, and me having cabin fever... today I dipped it in silver dip. (bad, I know). The surfaces nearly instantly grew bright like a silver coin would, which a dirty discolored nickel coin usually wouldn't. The (now, tragically) cleaned coin LOOKS the color of silver, compared to an ordinary quarter. So I have this burning curiosity of what I am looking at. Thanks for the reply.

The Denver Mint, with a D mint mark, made silver clad '76 quarters?
I could find no reference to this...

Just askin', but how can something be silver and clad at the same time?

The only silver bicentennial quarter has an S mint mark. I seem to recall reading somewhere that there were a couple 1977 40% silver half dollars that were somehow struck on planchets for that 3 coin set, so it's not entirely out of the range of possibilities. Occam's razor however states that we should assume a "silver" 1976-D quarter is just plated until proven otherwise.

@Spence, the 40% coins were "clad"; 80% silver outer layer on 20% silver inner layer. Made the coins look nice, but still not worth melting (at the time).

spare changed!

this one?...
1976 D Washington quarters
Bicentennial Design
Mintage: 860,118,839 Minted at: Denver
Designer - Engraver: Jack L Ahr Metal Composition: 91.67% Copper - 8.33% Nickel
Diameter: 24.3 mm Mass / Weight: 5.67 grams
What this coin looks like (obverse, reverse, mint mark location, special features, etc.):
1776-1976 D Bicentennial Washington quarter

Planchets are made at each mint, are they not? If they were all made in Philly and shipped out like dies, I could see some mixing happening, but otherwise, I don't see how a silver clad planchet would wind up in Denver. If it is genuine, it would probably have to be a back door job.
I'm still leaning toward plated or just discolored. The edge is usually a good indicator- I believe the core should appear dark, but not copper-colored.

The weight would be a good first test, but it's not definitive. Mint tolerances allow too much overlap between clad weight and 40% silver clad weight. A specific gravity test, or an XRF test would be definitive.




Yes the individual mints did make their own planchets at the time at least for the copper nickel clad planchets. I don't know if they punched their own 40% silver planchets or if they were provided by an outside supplier. Either way the San Francisco mint did have a policy of shipping proof planchets that had been rejected for quality problems to Denver to be used for making business strikes. It was intended that only the coppernickel clad planchets would be shipped to Denver, but in at least a couple of cases some 40% silver planchets were accidentally shipped apparently mixed in with the coppernickel. That's where the 1974 D and 1977 D 40% silver half dollars and dollars came from. So in theory 40% silver D mint Bicentennial coins could be possible.