My 10 Favorite Barber Coins
TO HEAR THE FAMOUS (or infamous) numismatist Walter Breen tell it, Mint Engraver Charles E. Barber’s record was notable for “. . . dullness and adamant opposition to outsiders’ designs.” When he was appointed one of three judges to consider new designs for the nation’s dimes, quarters, and half dollars, the result was a foregone conclusion: There were no winners.
And thus it was that Barber himself was selected to render the new designs. Breen described the Barber quarter as “. . . Germanically stolid, prosy, crowded (especially on rev.), and without discernible merit aside from the technical one of low relief.”
Of course, the silver coin series that bear Barber’s name are not the only widely used coins he designed. There’s also the Liberty Head nickel (or V-nickel) that replaced the earlier Shield nickel.
Notwithstanding the contempt with which Walter Breen viewed Barber’s silver creations, I’ve always liked the designs, perhaps because they still circulated to a limited extent when I was a junior collector. I remember with special fondness two Barber quarters I got from a friendly trolley driver who took a break each day when he reached the end of the line at my junior high school. They were
