Liberty Seated Quarter

History

The seated figure reached the quarter in mid-1838, two years after it appeared on the Gobrecht silver dollar and a year after the half dime and dime. Mint Director Robert Maskell Patterson wanted to retire John Reich's Capped Bust designs, admired the seated Britannia used on British coinage, and commissioned the painters Thomas Sully and Titian Peale to work up a seated Liberty concept, with Christian Gobrecht engraving the result. Gobrecht had joined the Mint as a draughtsman and die sinker under Chief Engraver William Kneass in 1836, and succeeded him in 1840 after Kneass died. Production continued for 54 years, through 1891, with the design altered several times along the way. The most consequential change came in 1853, when California gold pushed silver up against gold, speculators pulled subsidiary silver from commerce for melting, and Congress passed the Act of February 21, 1853 reducing the weight of the minor silver denominations while leaving the silver dollar untouched.

Details

Gobrecht is the engraver of record, working from Sully's obverse concept. The alloy stayed at 90% silver and 10% copper for the entire run, with a reeded edge and a diameter of 24.30 mm; only the weight changed. Reported figures for the pre-1853 standard range from 6.6 to 6.74 grams, and the Act of February 21, 1853 set the new weight at 96.000 grains, or 6.22 grams. Quarters were struck at Philadelphia without a mint mark, at New Orleans with an O, at San Francisco with an S beginning in 1855, and at Carson City with CC, Philadelphia coining continuously while the western mints struck in most years through 1878. The 1853 Arrows and Rays issue from Philadelphia reached 15,210,020 pieces, more than all quarters struck from 1838 through early 1853 combined, against just 44,200 no-arrows quarters made in 1853 before the standard changed.

Features

Liberty sits on a rock, her left hand holding a liberty cap on a pole and her right steadying a shield with LIBERTY on a banner across it, thirteen stars above and the date below. Gobrecht's original obverse carried no drapery under Liberty's elbow; drapery was added to the quarters in 1841, following a modification to the series attributed to the Philadelphia artist Robert Ball Hughes. The reverse shows a bald eagle, joined in 1853 alone by a glory of rays that was dropped the following year because it shortened die life, while the arrowheads flanking the date stayed on through 1855. IN GOD WE TRUST was added to the reverse in 1866, and arrows returned at the date on some 1873 issues and all of 1874 before being dropped for good. Collectors work the series as No Drapery, Drapery, Arrows and Rays, Arrows No Rays, With Motto and the 1873-74 Arrows, with the 1854-O Huge O mint mark ranking as a rare variety and the 1853/4 overdate a more affordable one.

Notable facts

• A 1838 No Drapery quarter graded PCGS MS68 brought $195,500 in an April 1, 2009 Heritage sale.
• Philadelphia struck 466,000 quarters in the first year of the type, 1838.
• The 1854 arrows issue, at 12,380,000 pieces, is the more plentiful of the two arrows-without-rays dates.
• As of August 2024 the finest certified 1853 Arrows and Rays quarters were three at PCGS MS67, four at NGC MS67 and one with a CAC MS67.
• The lighter coins authorized in 1853 circulated freely and ended the coin shortage that the melting of full-weight silver had created.