Early Quarter Checklist — the 32-issue date-and-variety set

Your early-quarter set

Every date and major variety of the series — 32 in all, from the valueless 1796 to the two-type year of 1838. Tick what you own; everything saves privately in this browser, no account required.

Before you read the table

That column says DELIVERED, not MINTAGE

The United States Mint never recorded how many coins of a given date it struck. It recorded how many coins the Chief Coiner delivered to the Treasurer within a calendar year — and it printed the warning itself. For most of this series the two happen to agree: nineteen of the dated issues carry the delivery figure unchanged. Where the trade shows more resolution than the record, it is always a merge, a partition, or an invention — never independent data.

24 of the 32 rows carry a figure and 8 show "—". The blanks are not missing research: where two varieties share one year's delivery, or where the record itself is silent, this reference shows nothing rather than an invented split. Each issue page carries both the recorded delivery and the trade's figure, labelled with who made it.

Watch one row in particular

1824/2 shows "—" where every price guide shows 24,000. The Mint delivered no quarter dollars at all in calendar 1824; the 24,000 is exactly what must be carved off the real 1825 delivery of 168,000 to leave the 144,000 the guides print for the 1825/4/2. A figure was invented for a year with no delivery — so this table shows the blank the record actually contains.

The full story →

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The 32-issue checklist

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Owned · 0%

Keys owned

Reduced size

0.0

oz silver

	Mint		Class	Market	Note
1796	P	5,894	KEY DATE	—	A further 252 pieces were delivered in the record's 1797 period, from the dies of 1796; no quarter bears the date 1797. Fifteen stars, no statement of value anywhere on the coin.
1804	P	6,738	KEY DATE	—	The denomination returns after six blank years — thirteen stars now, the Heraldic Eagle reverse, and 25 C. on the coin for the first time.
1805	P	121,394	DRAPED BUST	—	Twenty times the whole previous output of the denomination, in one year.
1806	P	206,124	DRAPED BUST	—	The commonest Draped Bust quarter.
1806/5	P	—	DRAPED BUST	—	The 5 shows distinctly under the 6 — the clearest undertype in the series, on a coin common enough to buy.
1807	P	220,643	DRAPED BUST	—	The largest Draped Bust year, and the last quarter for seven years. The report's June quarterly figure carries a compositor's slip its own value column corrects.
1815	P	69,232	LARGE SIZE	—	The entire United States silver coinage of 1815 was quarter dollars. No quarter bears the date 1816 or 1817.
1818	P	361,174	LARGE SIZE	—	The largest large-size year.
1818/5	P	—	LARGE SIZE	—	The die that waited three years, exactly as Browning predicted from the 1815 evidence.
1819 Small 9	P	144,000	LARGE SIZE	—
1819 Large 9	P	144,000	LARGE SIZE	—
1820 Small 0	P	127,444	LARGE SIZE	—
1820 Large 0	P	127,444	LARGE SIZE	—
1821	P	216,851	LARGE SIZE	—
1822	P	64,080	LARGE SIZE	—	The year that generates almost every rarity that follows.
1822 25/50C	P	—	KEY DATE	—	The denomination punched as 50, corrected to 25, both visible. The same die returns in 1828 as B-3.
1823/2	P	17,800	KEY DATE	—	The rarest circulating coin in the series, none Uncirculated — and its rarity is genuinely unexplained. A census of this coin was being kept by letter in December 1867, per a single-source PCGS note.
1824/2	P	—	KEY DATE	—	Browning's observational rarity note: "Date scarce when worn by circulation, but very rare if sharp."
1825/4/2	P	168,000	KEY DATE	—	The fourth and fifth 1822-descended obverses. Whether the orphaned 4,000 of CY1827 were also dated 1825 is an open question.
1827/3 Original	P	—	KEY DATE	—	The coin whose finest example sold for $227 in 1864. Browning's own plate coin of this issue is plate-matched into the modern census, and that plate is reproduced on this page.
1827/3 Restrike	P	—	KEY DATE	—	Sold openly as a restrike from at least 1906, priced above every regular date in the series.
1828	P	102,000	LARGE SIZE	—	The last large-size year.
1828 25/50C	P	—	KEY DATE	—	Two of the series' most valuable coins exist because of one engraver's slip in 1822.
1831 Small Letters	P	398,000	REDUCED SIZE	—	The most obtainable early quarter in high grade — and the first of the reduced size, introduced without a statute.
1831 Large Letters	P	398,000	REDUCED SIZE	—
1832	P	320,000	REDUCED SIZE	—
1833	P	156,000	REDUCED SIZE	—	The smallest delivery of the reduced-size run.
1834	P	286,000	REDUCED SIZE	—	The Act of June 28, 1834 passed this year, and with it the arbitrage that would melt the series.
1835	P	1,952,000	REDUCED SIZE	—	The largest delivery in the series — and a survival rate of 0.27%, the second-lowest. Coins made in bulk were spent, then melted.
1836	P	472,000	REDUCED SIZE	—	The year of the first steam coinage in America and of the hubbing announcement that ends the die-variety era.
1837	P	252,400	REDUCED SIZE	—	The last full year of the old 1792 standard — the Act of January 18, 1837 restated the fineness at .900.
1838	P	—	REDUCED SIZE	—	The series ends inside the year: Gobrecht's Liberty Seated quarter takes over mid-delivery, and Browning ends his book refusing to split the figure.

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Fill the gaps

Certified examples of the dates you still need

Issue	Certified listings	Lowest asking

Live eBay listings for graded examples of dates not ticked on your checklist — raw coins are excluded. Asking prices set by sellers, not our valuations and not realised sales. Your checklist stays in this browser; we never see it. Links are affiliate links.

There is no melt column here. Every early quarter contains the same 92 13/16 grains of pure silver by statute, on a standard the Act of January 18, 1837 replaced — and nobody sells one for its metal. A live price would be the same number on all thirty-two rows and a floor under none of them. The statutory silver content is on every issue page, where it belongs, as a specification.

Using the checklist well

Understand the shape before you start. Sort by Delivered and the series splits into its three sub-runs: the Draped Bust years (8.6% of the coinage, the highest survival rates, and the two expensive gates of 1796 and 1804), the large-size middle (where every celebrated overdate lives), and the reduced-size run of 1831–1838, which is 71.6% of everything the Mint made and the honest place to begin.

Decide about the proofs first. The 1827/3 Original and Restrike exist only as proofs — eight and fifteen known. A "complete" date-and-variety set that includes them is a different undertaking from one that stops at coins that circulated. Neither choice is wrong; make it deliberately.

Filter KEY DATES to see the gates. Nine issues carry that class, and they are not one kind of thing: a one-year type saved in quantity (1796), a genuine census rarity with no Uncirculated example (1823/2), two blundered-die varieties inside ordinary years (the 25/50 C. coins), and two proof-only strikings. The key-dates page ranks them with every figure labelled.

Then go one level deeper. The collecting unit beneath the checklist is the Browning variety — ninety of them, photographed in 1925 on plates you can read on this site for free. See varieties & attribution.

Store this set

What actually fits an early quarter dollar

27 mm · reduced to 24.3 from 1831

Capsule

Air-Tite H-27

Direct fit — cut to the coin, no ring

find one →

2x2 flip

Half Dollar (1.205")

Mylar window, never soft vinyl

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Album

Dansco 6141

Bust Quarters 1804–1838

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Tube

Not recommended

Too wide for a quarter tube at 27 mm

Second size

1831–1838, after the reduction — 24.3 mm, which takes an Air-Tite A-24.3. One set, two capsules — see that fit.

Measure before you buy. Diameter was never fixed by statute — which is exactly why 1831 could happen. The Mint reduced the quarter and thickened the planchet needing no legislation, passed none, and left no document explaining it. Before 1831 the coins were struck on an open collar and vary; caliper yours rather than trusting a nominal figure.

Derived from the coin's diameter against Air-Tite's published model chart — the full table, the materials grades and the six things that destroy coins are in the Supply Room. Ordered by fit and archival safety, never by commission. Product links are affiliate links; what they pay has no input into what appears here or in what order.

Sources

OBSERVED

57 sources

ESTIMATED

1 source

DERIVED

1 source

Sourced figures on this page trace to the ledger below. Editorial judgement is labelled as ours, and prices we have not sourced are not published.

View all sources & evidence methodology →

Continue: key dates & survival collecting pathways varieties & the plates series overview

Delivery figures come from the Mint's own contemporaneous report for each calendar year — thirty of them, cited individually in the ledger. Where a figure is repeated across two varieties of one date, the rows say so rather than double-counting. Published mintages are PCGS CoinFacts' (S30), observed 2026-08-24, and are never merged with the delivery record — and the 1824/2's is not reproduced at all, because it is an invention.