A New Look at Old Quarters
FOR DECADES now, the quarter has been one of the four real workhorse coins of everyday commerce within the U.S. The cent, the nickel, the dime, and the quarter are what pops out of our pockets for almost all of the small change transactions we undertake. And yet, way back when a young Congress finally got around to authorizing a Mint in Philadelphia, quarters appear to have been something of an afterthought. None were made at all until 1796, and even then, the total output was the tiniest of trickles. Let’s look then at some of our early twenty-five cent pieces and see just what sort of collection of them we might be able to assemble today.
What beginning?
While Julie Andrews was the one who famously sang that it was good to “start at the very beginning – it’s a very good place to start,” we’ll tweak the idea of beginning
