SILVER $69.11GOLD $4,604GOLD/SILVER 66.6PLATINUM $1,887PALLADIUM $1,371COPPER $6.47BTC $77,243SNAPSHOT○

Coins/ Quarters / Early Quarters/ 1815

FINENESS .8924ASW 0.19336 OZT6.74 G

Overview History Varieties Key Dates Collecting Checklist References

Issue RecordLARGE SIZEPhiladelphia89.24% Silver1 of 32 issues

1815 Capped Bust, large size Quarter

The Capped Bust arrives — and the 69,232 quarters delivered in 1815 were the ENTIRE silver coinage of the United States that year: 69,232 × $0.25 = $17,308, the report's own total, exactly. A further 20,003 were delivered in the first days of 1816, before the Mint burned on January 11; no quarter bears the date 1816, and the trade's 89,235 merges the two deliveries. One Browning variety. PCGS estimates 1,875 survivors; record $282,000, MS67+★, November 2013.

1815 · Capped Bust, large size Quarter

1815Photography pending

The numbers, and what kind of numbers they are

Every figure carries its evidence class. Press a class to open the record behind it — what it rests on, by what method, and what the series says you should not conclude from it.

RECORDED DELIVERY

69,232

The Mint recorded what the Chief Coiner DELIVERED in a calendar year, not what it struck bearing a date. Where the registry combines years, the split is a reconstruction and the class says so.

DATED ATTRIBUTION

89,235

What the trade assigns to coins bearing this date. A modern allocation by an outside authority, not a federal record.

ESTIMATED SURVIVORS

1,875

An estimate of how many still exist in any grade, not a count of coins anyone has seen. Every issue in this series carries one, which is not true of any other series here.

DIE MARRIAGES

How many obverse/reverse die pairings are catalogued for this issue. A marriage is a distinct pair of hand-cut dies, which is what makes these coins collectable by variety rather than by date alone.

What the record asserts

The figures above are measurements. This is the proposition they support, in the Archive's own claim vocabulary — a different scale from the figure classes, because a claim can be probable where the number behind it is exact.

CLAIMThe published 1815 quarter-dollar mintage of 89,235 is the sum of two calendar-year deliveries - 69,232 in CY1815 and 20,003 in CY1816 - and no quarter dollar dated 1816 is known.

STATUSCONFIRMED — the Archive's assessment of the proposition, not of the arithmetic.

CLAIM IDearly-quarters-1815-mintage-merges-1816-delivery

Specifications

SpecificationValue

DENOMINATIONQuarter

DESIGNERRobert Scot (Draped Bust obverse, Small Eagle and Heraldic Eagle reverses) · John Reich (Capped Bust)

COMPOSITION89.24% silver, 10.76% copper — 92 13/16 grains of pure silver in 104 grains of standard silver

WEIGHT6.74 g

SILVER CONTENT0.19336 ozt

DIAMETERNot fixed by statute — which is the point of 1831. The Act of April 2, 1792 specifies weight and fineness and says nothing about diameter, so when the Mint reduced the quarter's diameter and thickened the planchet in 1831 it needed no legislation, passed none, and left no document explaining the decision.

EDGEReeded

MINTPhiladelphia only — the branch mints opened in 1838 and the first branch-mint quarter is the 1840-O

MINT MARKNone. No early quarter carries a mint mark.

DIE MARRIAGES1 (B-1) — and Browning saw the shelved second pair: "See 1818 No. 1."

The primary record

Every document behind the figures above. Where OunceDesk holds a copy, the row opens it.

Report of the Director of the Mint for calendar 1815
Held in the Archive · behind recorded delivery

PCGS CoinFacts — Draped Bust and Capped Bust quarter categories and ~30 major-variety pages
External authority — not held by OunceDesk · behind dated attribution

OunceDeskPrecious Metals IntelligenceIndependent research, market data, tools and coin intelligence for people who take hard assets seriously.

Hard Money. Hard Numbers. · Not investment advice. Some links pay us a commission — disclosures. Affiliate economics never determine research conclusions or rankings. © 2026 OunceDesk. Every figure classed OBSERVED / DERIVED / ESTIMATED / SPECULATIVE.