ok so i went to make a purchase via craigslist, i thought i was going to buy pre 1964 quarters, easily discernible. But instead they are supposedly 90% state quarters. He had drove a long way so i agreed to buy them still as long as he would give me a week to get a refund if they turned out to be not 90% silver. any ideas on how the hell im supposed to know if they are real? they are very shiny but i would suppose regular quarters in mint shape would be very shine too. thanks
no idea how lol, maybe ill try and figure it out tonight. they seem to look like a normal quarter, but a lot more glossy, shiny.
good news, i think they are legit. They don't have a copper streak on the edge that a normal state quarter does. Also they appear slightly bigger, (which they should). they are supposed to weigh 6.25 grams compared to a normal quarter at 5.67, unfortunately i dont have a scale that measures down to grams. But the fact they don't have a copper line and they look like they should weigh more makes me at least fairly confident they are real....
if they are silver then they will have a very distincitve ding sound when dropped... easiest test to do (doesn't guarantee its silver, but guarantees its NOT if the ding isnt there)
weighing them would be the best way. 6.25 g as you stated. How are they packaged? just loose change? these proof sets are usually pristine looking coins.
what he said. you could do my test that I did on canadian quarters. look for acoustic resonant spectroscopy. compare a known clad quarter (or a known silver quarter better yet) and see if the graphs look the same. you can do it with audacity, a free music editing program. edit: by the way, what did you pay for them? and here is the thread and this is my 300th post
http://www.gainesvillecoins.com/products/157927/(1Face)of90SilverStateQuarterCoins.aspx I believe GP is correct in that only proofs are silver after 1964. See this listing by Gainesville.
Here's a quarter silver proof picture. Notice the S (San Francisco) mint mark but the non-silver proofs have the same mark. All silver quarters post 1964 are proof but all proof aren't silver. I don't have any non-silver proofs to see but Wikipedia says that the coins have a copper core so I'm sure the lack of the "sandwich" streak is a clear indication that they are silver. If you're going to play in metals, a scale accurate to .1 gram is a must; it's not like they cost a bunch. What did you pay for them?
There are proof state quarters that came in a five coin set in a plastic holder. These are 90% silver. There are uncirculated state quarters in a 5 coins mint set that are NOT silver. Then...there are the regular circulated state quarters used in everday currency that are NOT silver. The uncirculated ones look a lot like the proof ones, ex. shiney. I don't know why anyone would take the proof ones out of the case they come in unless it was to save on shipping. Hope this helps. There is some info on US Mint site...Dee
Pull up feebay and type in proof state quarters, and then silver proof state quarters. I think the uncirculated are in blue cases while while the silver ones are in black cases...also, the black cases say Silver.
Looking through the K & M World coin catalogue I see that ALL quarters up to and including 1964 are 0.9 silver and weigh 6.25g Diameter is 24.3 Get yourself a proper electronic scale that measures 0.01 gram accuracy for less than $10 on fee-Bay !!
you can relieve yourself of the angst if you do the quantitative ring test. downloading and installing the program, recording the drop induced ring of a known silver quarter and then one that you bought would take 5 minutes.
