United States 1864-S Seated Liberty Quarter
San Francisco and along the West Coast were handling a rarity in the mid-1860s.
As their counterparts in the east were vanishing from circulation during the Civil War, silver coins in San Francisco were circulating much more extensively – including the
1864-S Seated Liberty quarter, which turned out to be a major rarity. Consumers might have known that the freshly-struck quarters were prized in the east for their silver content but might not have suspected that, decades later, the coins would be sought-after by collectors interested in their scarcity, not their precious metal.
The new branch mint began striking silver quarters and half dollars in 1855