The "Original" DLH 3rd Grade Starter Set

关于此套币: The Seated Quarter Low Ball Quest…. The Seated Quarter series is probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest series to collect in any grade, not counting Gold. I find this set to be an incredibly interesting set due to all of the changes which occurred with the designs and coin weights. Drapery or No Drapery, Stars and no Stars, Arrows and Rays or just Arrows, and with and without Motto, and even a Huge “O” and Large “O”! This is a very large set that has so many different things going on, that it takes time to fully appreciate it! Add to that, the enormous number of quarters melted when the weights changed. Numismatists will never know just how many of each particular year and mint were melted! When looking at some of the earlier Carson City, Nevada Mint coins in this series, mintages were very small on the outset. One has to wonder how many of these miniscule mintages were melted almost immediately, leaving very few examples extent? When perusing Dealers inventories at shows or shops of Seated Liberty Quarters, you will immediately notice how few coins are usually encountered. Comparing Seated Quarters to other series, availability is minute; compared to Barber Quarters I’d say 1 in 30 or maybe even fewer? Starting in 1879 most mintage figures dropped precipitously to just fractions of previous levels; take 1886 for example, they only coined 5000 Business strikes at the Philadelphia Mint! Could you image striking only 5000 Quarters at the Philadelphia Mint today? It would make the 2019 quarter scramble for “The Great American Coin Hunt” look like children’s play! I should add the reason for the sudden drop in Quarter mintages was the introduction of the New Morgan Silver Dollar in 1878 which was given top priority by the government who were beholden to the big Silver interests out West… And boy did they churn out Silver Dollars during the first year of the Morgan Dollar; combined mintages for the Morgan Dollar in 1878 was over 22 million coins, and adding Trade Dollar mintages of the same year, the total goes well over 26 million!
Today, 3 July 2022 I pulled a memorable line from Gerry Fortin’s web page. (Thanks Gerry!) Gerry speaks about “S” mint Seated Liberty Quarters. This is paramount to the Low Ball collector community out there; and what makes it such an interesting, and challenging genre..… Gerry states; ”Please stop and think about the amount of circulation necessary to reduce devices to a VG detail level. The lack of abrasions is remarkable.” Wow! Now take that VG level down a bunch of notches and you really start to wonder what survival rates really are for some early United States series!? Welcome to the challenges of Low Ball collecting!
I wish to thank all of the Collectors, Professional Numismatists, and fellow Low Ball Enthusiasts who helped in this monumental task; without your help I would not have been able to assemble such a set! The clear majority of the coins in this set were purchased raw and certified; many, many hours, and miles amassed in this endeavor....