Hello Silver & Gold stackers! Another week and I have another coin for you! We have another American coin this time. My local coin shop does get a lot of other world coins, but being from America, I do tend to gravitate to the American coins he has. One of these days I'll branch out from just Japanese and American coins, but that day is not today.
This is the one we'll be talking about in this post:
I'll give some basic coin stats, then we'll look at both sides, and then I'll give some more general info!
Sound fun? Let's go!
Some basic coin stats for you:
and most importantly, it's 90% silver, so that means about 5.6 grams of silver. Woohoo silver!
Let's look at the coin a little more.
We have Liberty standing, hence the name of the coin, a sheld in her left hand and olive branch in her right with 13 stars on the sides. It is very much in the classical style, calling to mind Greek sculptures, and with Liberty looking a lot like Athena.
The first designs of the coin had her topless to go along with that classical style. Later versions made her more modest by adding chainmail. The rumor has always been that they added the chainmail because Americans are too prudish and complained that the coin design was corrupting youth (or something), but according to Wikipedia there is no evidence of public outcry and instead it was the sculptor himself who asked for the change. Evidently this was to reflect the deteration of relations with Germany leading up to America's joining the first world war and the pro-war attitude.
Later versions of the coin also changed the u in "trust" to be more shaped as a "u" instead of as a "v", presumably because Americans are easily confused. The one I have is the revised version of the coin (the 3nd revision, actually), but here is the first if you are interested:
Ou la la - From Wikipedia
The reverse features an eagle in flight. It's a nice enough eagle design. The first two versions of the coin had all the stars on the sides while the third version spaces them out more and puts three under the eagle.
It's a really nice design, lasting from 1917 to 1930 when it was replaced with the Washington quarter. I think this one is much nicer than what followed.
Here is that copper replica that I ordered.
The front of that copper replica looks weird. Something is just off about it. But the back looks pretty good.
I only have the copper replica in that capsule, by the way, because copper tarnishes so quickly if you touch it. I bought a different copper coin several months ago, and within a few weeks it was tarnished, turning much darker and getting green around some of the details.
Anyway this quarter cost me ¥1000, which isn't too bad. That's about $7 USD, which seems to be cheaper than most of the ones I see on Ebay. Collecting these probably isn't a good value of you are just buying junk silver to stack silver, but if you like collecting nice designs then this is one to get.
With the US mint bringing back old designs for their bullion coins, I wish they would bring back this one too. I think it's one of the best. What do you think?
| David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
