A numismatist at DLRC, I was attending the American Numismatic Association National Money Show in Savannah, Georgia, Feb. 26 to 28 and left with a fascinating story and a seemingly undiagnosed variety!

In the course of a day’s work, I was handed an 1877-S Coronet gold $2.50 quarter eagle  graded by Professional Coin Grading Service as Mint State 62 for consignment, a lovely coin that we were thrilled to offer with no reserve in our Sunday, March 22, auction. The coin realized $1,440.

In researching the coin, I viewed past examples we have handled as well as recent auction results, and noticed a huge difference among some of the coins.

Some coins, including the piece we picked up at the show, bear the S Mint mark between the eagle’s talons and the arrow’s nock, above the 1, while on others, the Mint mark appears between the arrow fletchings and the stem, above the space between 2 and D.

This is a pretty noticeable difference, so I dug deeper to see if these are a recognized Type 1 and Type 2 variety, or if this was an undiscovered, rare error.

To my surprise, it’s neither! I researched all avenues and found next to no mention of such differences, but I found several examples of each “variety” in past auctions.

So it is not a never-before-seen rarity, but it’s also not a known, popular variety.

Fascinating!

I reached out to Ron Guth, a well-known and extremely knowledgeable numismatist and researcher, to see if he was able to shed some light on the topic.

Guth responded, “Mintmark placement is often random (see Barber quarters and other series). I don’t think it’s an old versus new reverse kinda thingy; rather, it’s just a different Mint mark placement.

“However, it would be interesting to check to see if the same reverse shows up in previous or subsequent years.”

I suspected that it could be a Mint mark variance, but the placement seemed too wildly different to be summed up as such.

Guth recommended that I reach out to professional numismatist Doug Winter, and when I di, he similarly stated, “I’ve not studied the reverses of the ‘77-S quarter eagles, but would not be surprised to learn that there are at least two Mint mark positions and maybe even a third.”

As suggested, I looked into 1876-S and 1878-S quarter eagles to see how the 1877-S compared regarding Mint mark placement. I noticed that 1877-S is the first year San Francisco Mint quarter eagle to feature a “new reverse,” which boasts a smaller eagle and a smaller Mint mark that is roughly half the size of the Mint mark of previous years.

The old reverse of 1876-S boasts a large Mint mark that is always, as far as my research proved, between the eagle’s talons and the nock of the arrow, above the 1.

So, we struck out there, but I found something interesting when looking into the 1878 S-Mint issue.

Not only does 1878-S show both Mint mark positions I noted for the 1877-S issue, but also shows another position, squished right below the lower tip of the arrow fletchings, above the / in the fraction representing a portion of the denomination.

Upon thinking this through, I dug deeper into the dies. It would make sense that the 1877-S quarter eagle was struck with fewer dies than the 1878-S edition, as the mintage pales in comparison, 35,400 coins versus 178,000 pieces.

However, according to Walter Breen’s Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins, both the 1877-S and 1878-S quarter eagles were struck from four pairs of dies. Regarding the 1877-S coin, Breen also states “4 Pairs of dies, minor positional vars. May exist with ‘Type I’ rev. As formerly.” For the 1878-S issue, he says, “4 pairs of dies, of which 3 have this style S (as in 1877); they vary notably in positions of S and date.”

So, problem solved! Turns out, that they are just Mint mark position variances. But, I do still have some questions.

• Why does Breen list “minor positional vars.” for 1877-S and “vary notably in positions of S” for 1878-S, even though the positions are the same, save for an extra 1878-S placement?

• Is this placement discrepancy large enough to warrant formal varieties?

• If this was a Morgan dollar, you bet your bottom “dollar” that this would be a variety with sub-varieties, so why is that not the case for this gold quarter eagle issue?

  Some questions may never be answered. While I raced down this rabbit-trail, I did find a few nuggets of information:

• According to my research, the “Type 1” variety (with Mint mark between the talons and arrow, above the 1) is the more common of the two identified placements.

  In the 27 auction records on PCGS CoinFacts from 2020 to present, 16 are Type 1 and 11 are Type 2. Auction results are slightly skewed as many coins are auctioned multiple times, but Type 1 is seen much more frequently.

• Type 1 examples are, on average, typically seen in a higher grade than Type 2 examples. When looking at different companies’ auction results, the number of Type 1’s is higher than the count for Type 2s in MS-62 to MS-65, but in lower grades, Type 2s are more prevalent.

  Regardless of the Mint mark position, the 1877-S quarter eagle is a tough coin to locate, especially in mid-Uncirculated grades and better. Only three examples are on the market at the moment and one of those ran with no reserve in DLRC’s March 22 auction, a lovely PCGS MS-62 coin, with the Type 1 Mint mark position!

  If this article intrigued or inspired you, I would love to hear from you with any feedback, information, etc. For the overachieving collector who enjoyed this piece, I suggest that you try and collect all of the Mint mark positions for the date, and for other dates which are sure to have the same fascinating placements.

  Who knows, someday it might become a recognized variety, when someone decides to write the definitive reference guide on the wide-ranging series of Coronet quarter eagle gold coins.