Early Quarter Dollars: 1796-1807
Today we think of the quarter dollar as perhaps the most important coin in daily use. With the advent of the new State quarters in 1999, and the 2010 America the Beautiful issues, this has become even more relevant, with ordinary citizens now looking through their pocket change for that missing ‘P’ or ‘D’ mintmark. This was not always true, however, and in the early days of the Republic quarter dollars made at the Philadelphia Mint were few and far between.
This is not to say that the quarter dollar denomination was not widely used in early America, because it was, but in a different form. The Spanish coin of 8 reales, usually called a “dollar” by the colonists, had minor subdivisions just as the dollar today has cents, nickels, and dimes. In particular, the Spanish struck 2 reales coins (one-fourth of the eight reales) at numerous mints, including Mexico City, Lima, and Potosi. These were widely used before and after the Revolution.
In the mid–1780s, when an American system of coinage was being discussed by the Confederation Congress, one delegate so disliked the quarter dollar concept that he proposed a 20–cent piece in its place. This suggestion by Thomas Jefferson is not as strange as it seems because the Spaniards, ever pleased to debase their currency, struck a 2–reales piece in Spain that was actually worth only 1/5 of a dollar in the
