Where to find old quarters

Subscribe to Free Announcements:. E-mail Bob Marino or call x Learn about consigning with us. Video tutorial Getting the most out of search. Hall of fame. Indian Quarter Eagles Scarce dates: D. Four Dollar Gold Pieces All are rare. Indian Half Eagles Rare dates: O, Generally worth their bullion value.

Large Cents Liberty Cap Rare date: Large Cents Draped Bust Rare dates: , Large Cents Classic Head No rare dates. Large Cents Matron Head Scarce date: Large Cents Young Head No rare dates.

Lincoln Cents Copper All are rare -- won't stick to a magnet. Gold Commemoratives All are scarce. Modern Commemorative Many different types, both gold and silver. Silver Commemoratives Many different types exist, many are scarce. Bust Dimes Capped Bust Rare date: Roosevelt Dimes Silver No rare dates. Roosevelt Dimes Clad No rare dates.

Early Dollars Flowing Hair All are rare. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens.

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The information on this site does not modify any insurance policy terms in any way. Finding a treasure hidden in an old dresser drawer or the attic is the stuff of dreams.

Many of the coins in the list below are not likely to be hiding in your attic, since they are tremendously rare, but not all of them are super expensive either. Still it can be difficult to spot a fake, even for the pros. More valuable coins offer the potential for higher profits for scammers, of course, but such coins are also very rare. A couple of these might just turn up in your couch cushions.

The Flowing Hair Silver Dollar may sit atop the rankings of the most expensive coin ever sold, at least for now. Some experts believe that it was the first silver dollar struck by the U. The front features a profile of Lady Liberty with flowing hair, while the reverse shows an American eagle. The front of the coin shows a state seal with a rising sun, while the reverse shows the American eagle with a shield.

The coin is already rare, but certain versions of it have fetched a variety of prices, depending on their specific characteristics. The Fugio cent, also known as the Franklin cent, after founding father Benjamin Franklin, may have been the first coin circulated in the newly formed United States.

Zivi suggests you could buy a Fugio cent for a few hundred dollars, making it relatively accessible for a coin with such an interesting history. Next record the date for all the coins. This way I can perhaps get an estimation for the age distribution of coins. Since it seems that both the quarters and dimes have a distribution that is similar, I decided to plot a histogram of those two groups of coins together. View Iframe URL. The most common years for quarters and dimes in this collection seems to be around to But what about nickels and pennies?

Since they don't have the same silver problem, I think I would find more older coins. Here is a histogram for the nickels and pennies. What's crazy about this? I found TWO pennies. Maybe that isn't crazy, but just surprising and cool. But look at the years. You can see from the data especially since the graph is on Plotly that there are about the same number nickels and pennies from and from What does this tell me? It tells me that if people weren't hoarding the silver coins, I should expect to find at least a few silver quarters and dimes.

Yes, by "people" I mean both normal humans and other things like banks and the US government. I suspect that they take these older coins out of circulation when they find them.

Suppose that no one even knew that older quarters and dimes were mostly silver such that they would still be in circulation. What are the chances of finding one?

Ok, brace yourself. This might be sort of a stretch in terms of modeling, but here's what I'm going to do. Let me use the pennies and nickels as an example of a non-looted sample of coins. Can I use this to get a probability distribution for different years? Of course I can, but will it be any good? Since I don't have THAT many nickels and pennies under , some there is some fluctuation of the number for a given year.

In order to smooth things out a little bit, I made a histogram with 5 year bin sizes. This means that the bin includes all the data from years. With that, I can get the fraction of coins for each bin. Another trick I am going to use is to plot the number of coins vs.