Silver Quarters Central

While most of us as buyers of silver quarters simply for their silver content are familiar with the Washington and Standing Liberty variants of the quarter fewer of us have seen or perhaps even heard of the Barber or Seated Liberty designs.

The Seated Liberty quarter design was in use from 1836-1891 and was actually a design that was shared with half dimes, dimes, half dollars and even silver dollars.

There was brief period when a twenty cent piece but it had a very short life since it was easy to confuse it with the quarter.

Like the Standing Liberty coin there were two variants of the Seated Liberty design: one featuring no motto (made from 1838-1865) and one WITH a motto (1866-1891). The motto was the common “In God We Trust” phrase we’ve become used to seeing on coinage.

You will find Seated Liberty designs minted at the following branches of the United States Mint:

• Philadelphia
• New Orleans
• San Francisco
• Carson City

If you are merely interested in silver quarters because of their silver content you can relax a bit and not feel bad about the fact that you didn’t know much about the Seated Liberty quarters.

I was surprised to learn some of the characteristics of this quarter variant but in reality the most popular quarter for purely silver accumulation purposes is the Washington quarter.

The older quarters tend to have more numismatic value so if that is your thing try and find some of these quarters but otherwise stick to Washington silver quarters, Franklin half dollars and other forms of more common circulated silver (or bullion) for investment purposes.