3.8 billion silver Washingtons struck; 0.1808 ozt each.
Struck for Washington's 200th birthday in 1932 and intended as a one-year commemorative, the design simply never left. Silver Washingtons are the most-recognized junk-silver coin, and at 90% silver each carries about fifty times its face value at current spot — the single clearest illustration of what happened to the dollar after 1964.
The 1932 'commemorative' has now outlived every regular design it was supposed to interrupt.
Check these before treating any coin as melt. Think you have one? Check recent auction records before selling, and read the grading basics first.
Never clean a coin. Ever. Cleaning permanently destroys collector value — dark original toning is worth more than shiny damage.
Gear that settles it: an electromagnetic verifier, a calibrated scale and calipers — counterfeit basics.
All 1964-and-earlier quarters are 90% silver - about $12.50 of metal at $69 spot, roughly 50x face value.
Face value - 1965 began the copper-nickel clad era. The edge shows a copper stripe; silver quarters have solid silver edges.
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