Do I have rare US quarters and are the coins worth more than face value?

On a recent trip to the US, we used plenty of cash for transactions. I noticed that some of the quarters were different designs to the usual one you see with the Eagle.

I pocketed the quarters which appeared unusual and have arrived back in Britain with seven of them, face value $1.75.

They feature; three quarters from 1999, one from Pennsylvania, one from Connecticut and one from Delaware.

I also have a 2000 one from South Carolina, 2015 one from Delaware (with a different design), a 2016 West Virginia quarter and one from New Jersey from 2017, depicting Ellis Island.

Can some quarter designs be rare and worth money, and could I make a mint by listing them for sale online? – M.B., via email

George Nixon, This is Money replies: Under normal circumstances a good barometer of how much a coin may sell for is its rarity, which you can usually determine from the number of times it was minted.

However, that’s a slightly different proposition in the case of a country like the US, which is much larger and much more populous than Britain. 

As a case in point, the 1998 regular quarter dollar you brought back, the Washington quarter, which features America’s first president on one side and the Bald Eagle on the other, was minted 1,717,268,000 times.

Yes, more than 1.7billion of those coins were produced in 1998. So clearly rarity is relative.

Flying: The most common US quarter dollar features George Washington on one side and the Bald Eagle, the symbol of the US Government, on the other. The US Mint frequently produces special sets of commemorative coins

The coins you’ve brought back belong to two different special sets the US Mint produced, in the same way the Royal Mint produces sets of coins to commemorate the London Olympics or the character of Beatrix Potter’s books.

The first set, known as the 50 states set, was a set of coins the US Mint began minting in 1999 and finished in 2008.

It created one quarter dollar for every state in the Union, and released five coins every year. As you can imagine, not an exact number were minted for each state.

Your three 1999 quarters from Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania, three of the first 13 colonies which became the first states of the Union, are thus from this set, as is your 2000 coin from South Carolina.

Of the four, the least rare is the coin from Connecticut, which was minted just under 1.35billion times, while Pennsylvania’s quarter is the rarest, but was still minted 707.3million times.

While the coins were probably designed with collectors in mind when they were created, and it’s possible you would have picked up all 50 states’ quarters, their abundance means they don’t sell for very much.

This is Money has checked for all four coins on eBay and found all of them listed for between £1 and £2, but the most common price is around £1.50. Of course, this would still be more than six times their face value, once you factor in the exchange rate.

Even the rarest of the 50 quarters, Oklahoma’s, which was minted in the last year of the set and features the state’s bird, the Scissortail Flycatcher and, and its flower, the Indian Blanket, was still struck 416.6million times.

It’s hardly the Kew Gardens 50p, for example – in which just 210,000 were minted – and again, these sell for around a maximum of £2.

The rarest of the 50 quarters produced from 1999 to 2008, one for every state, was the one for Oklahoma. It was still minted 416.6million times

Unfortunately, it’s also a similar story with the three coins you’ve got from the other set.

These three were part of a set called America the beautiful, which began in 2010. On this occasion, the US Mint aimed to commemorate 56 different national parks and landmarks, including ones in Washington DC and US territories including Guam and Puerto Rico.

The Mint has produced five coins a year since then, beginning with some of the more familiar American natural landmarks including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite National Park in California and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

The ones you’ve got feature Bombay Hook, a wildlife refuge in Delaware, John Brown’s Fort in the town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, named after the abolitionist of the same name who was hanged after a failed raid on the fort in 1859, and the famous immigration processing centre of Ellis Island in New York Harbour. 

While two of the quarters you have are indeed scarcer than the ones from the other set you’ve picked up, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re worth any more.

The rarest of the set minted so far featured New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Park, which was produced in 2012 and struck just 44million times, and even that still only sells for around £2.

The minting error to look out for 

While the above might be slightly disheartening from your perspective, if you’re ever back in the States, there is one particular coin you should keep your eyes peeled for, as you could be really in the money.

Just like our Royal Mint, the US Mint clearly isn’t immune to the odd minting error. 

And nothing helps a coin’s value, as we’ve reported previously, quite like one of those.

Going back to the 50 states set, in 2004 the Midwestern state of Wisconsin had its turn to be put on a coin. 

The 30th quarter in the set, it features the head of a cow, a round of cheese and an ear of corn, a nod to its agricultural background and nickname as ‘America’s Dairyland’.

The 2004 Washington quarter features a cow, a wheel of cheese and an ear of corn

Though given it’s more well known as the Badger State, the black-and-white striped mammal is surprisingly nowhere to be seen.

However, while the coin was only supposed to have two leaves sticking out from the main ear of the corn, as you can see above, a minting error left an unknown number of quarters with an extra leaf. 

However, some coins were minted with an error that saw them given an extra leaf. This small changes makes a big difference to its value, with the coin frequently selling for three figures

This small change, it turns out, makes a big difference to how much you can sell it for. 

Checking on eBay, this coin with the error has sold for as much as £117, as well as smaller sales in the range of £70.

The next time you, or anyone else reading this, find yourself in the US and end up with a pocketful of quarters then, make sure you check them carefully.

Don’t just leaf through them, as the reward could be some big cheese.