1912-S Barber Quarter: Mintmark Position

Some recent posts mentioned the fact that for some Barber quarters the mintmark can occur in two major positions: either far to the right or roughly centered below the eagle's tail. That got me wondering about minor variations in mintmark position. Since they were hand-punched into the dies, small variations in mintmark position were probably unavoidable. Mintmark locations are important diagnostics for coins like the 1909-S VDB Lincoln Cent. The entire mintage of 484,000 cents was produced using dies with 4 known mintmark configurations. Any 1909-S VDB that does not match one of these is a fake.

I happened to have three examples of 1912-S Barber quarters, all in about VG-8 condition. I checked the mintmarks and sure enough they are in three slightly different locations. This is a common coin so probably no one will be mapping mintmarks in order to detect counterfeits but I thought it was an interesting factoid.

Here are obverse and reverse images of one of these quarters, plus photos of the mintmarks for all three. With a total mintage of 708,000 for the date it seems likely that more than 3 reverse dies were used, so other variations should exist.