20th Century Type Set

FOR MOST collectors, collecting by design type is preferable to assembling sets of all date and mintmark combinations. Consider Barber quarters; the series has three big keys or stoppers: 1896-S, 1901-S, and 1913-S. The least expensive is the 1896-S, which lists for $550 in G4 in this magazine’s pricing guide “Market Watch,” MW).

If you’re collecting Barber quarters by type, however, you’ll see that a common date coin such as the 1916-D lists for only $325 in MS63. Of course, it’s much less than that in lower, but still decent, grades.

Here, I’m going to discuss a different approach to the 20th century type set, one requiring both the first year of the type and also the last year. I will focus on design types that began and ended in the 20th century, and I won’t include gold pieces because of the expense of even the most common dates. In addition, design types with either changing obverses and/or reverses will not be included. All prices are taken from this magazine’s pricing guide.

One other note before I begin: Most of the more recent types may be found with some diligent roll searching.

Four different Lincoln cents appeared in the series’ first year: two from Philadelphia, one with the designer’s initials (V.D.B.) and one without (and the same from San Francisco). The initials stand