RARE KEY DATE 1860S SEATED QUARTER DUG!!

Cal_Cobra

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Minelab EQ800 & Makro Multi Kruzer, the rest are collecting dust...
Tom, his friend Tony, and I went on a 2.5 day weekend detecting adventure and I dug this uber rare 1860 San Francisco mint Liberty Seated quarter on the trip - only 56,000 minted. It's the only coin I dug on the trip.

Here's the before and after shots of the coin:








Here's the rest of the finds from the trip.

First up was a civil war era encampment that the Union Army frequented that seems to pork out lots of buttons and lead, a few relics, and very few coins (which seems really odd?). Id' say that by now, between Tom and I alone, that we've dug well over 600+ conductors there, of which only two were coins. No belt or cartridge box plates, no bit bosses, only one company letter, no regiment numbers, seems odd, but I'm not complaining, I enjoy finding civil war era buttons and lead, and heck we don't even have to go back east B)- Even though research seems to indicate this was mainly a cavalry camp, this is the first button we've found that actually had a cavalry C in the shield. Also that little bit on the bottom right, is actually a two piece button, the front seems to have some kind of goldstone that they polished out a letter "S" and left the rest matte finished. It's a tiny button, if it hadn't had a button loop on the back, I'd likely thought it was a bit of junk - lol





Does anyone know what this is? It was a heck of a signal, some kind of cast bronze/brass decorative thing, we're thinking it could be part of an old gun (see above next to the buttons for a size estimate)???

It definitely has a pre-industrial revolution era hand cast look to it like items we find at late 1700's/early 1800's Spanish era sites.





The next site is one that I've known of it's existence for ten years, but it wasn't until I brought Tom out on a ghost town trip, that we discussed the site, and decided to get serious about locating it. It took lots of research time and a few trips to the area to finally find the X marks the spot location. Now that we have, it seems to be a virgin site, all but forgotten to time.




Thanks for looking,
Brian
 

Upvote 56
Thanks everyone for the nice comments :icon_thumleft:
 

As my children would say..."when you die, can i have it?"...Awesome find and congratulations!
 

Soaked it in Ezest. It took the better part of a week for the black to come off, but I'm pretty happy with the results :occasion14:

First a bunch of great Finds ,sounds like y'all had a great 'huntcation'.

Please tell me/Us about the great working "Ezest" product.

Also if you have time , Can you please post what back-marks are on the or Some of the Eagle Buttons , the 'C' one especially.

Great Hunt you had thanks for the pictures.
Davers
 

Ezest???? Excellent seated quarter you have!
 

Outstanding find. Congratulations!
 

Spectacular site! Hit that thing over and over
 

I might be one of just a few dedicated Seated quarter collectors who read this forum, so let me chime in on the rarity of the 1860-S quarter. First of all, yes, Banner. The 1860-S is very scarce, and nearly all available examples are worn down to lower grades. Yours appears to have XF details, which is rare. It has some environmental damage on its surfaces, but finding one of these with XF details is really, really tough.

Value range? $1,500 to $2,500 in an auction venue, I would guess. The value depends a lot on whether the surfaces are choice, average, corroded, etc. I previously owned an 1860-S quarter that was more worn (Fine/VF) and had been cleaned, but it still sold for somewhere around $1,200. More recently, I paid $8,000 for a VF35 graded 1860-S quarter in a PCGS holder, but it has the "perfect" original look that boosts the price to those levels. The point is that 1860-S quarters are very expensive, and you just dug a nice one up for free!
 

First a bunch of great Finds ,sounds like y'all had a great 'huntcation'.

Please tell me/Us about the great working "Ezest" product.

Also if you have time , Can you please post what back-marks are on the or Some of the Eagle Buttons , the 'C' one especially.

Great Hunt you had thanks for the pictures.
Davers

E-zest is an almost transparent blue liquid made to "dip" coins into. Apparently it's a mixture of sulfuric acid and thiourea with a colored surfactant. Of course it's not usually recommended to clean coins, but given the original condition of the coin, there wasn't much to loose, and as I don't plan to sell it, or even think about having it graded, it's purely for my own satisfaction.

OK, on to the buttons :thumbsup:

The Calvary button (and several others) says:

***EXTRA ***QUALITY

One of the small cuff eagle buttons says:

SCOVILLS & CO EXTRA

One of the large eagle buttons says:

Wm LANG BOSTON MASS

One of the large eagles has a concave back with no backmark.

Interesting that although the buttons are similar, and from around the same time period, they have such a variety of backmarks.
 

I might be one of just a few dedicated Seated quarter collectors who read this forum, so let me chime in on the rarity of the 1860-S quarter. First of all, yes, Banner. The 1860-S is very scarce, and nearly all available examples are worn down to lower grades. Yours appears to have XF details, which is rare. It has some environmental damage on its surfaces, but finding one of these with XF details is really, really tough.

Value range? $1,500 to $2,500 in an auction venue, I would guess. The value depends a lot on whether the surfaces are choice, average, corroded, etc. I previously owned an 1860-S quarter that was more worn (Fine/VF) and had been cleaned, but it still sold for somewhere around $1,200. More recently, I paid $8,000 for a VF35 graded 1860-S quarter in a PCGS holder, but it has the "perfect" original look that boosts the price to those levels. The point is that 1860-S quarters are very expensive, and you just dug a nice one up for free!

Thank you for taking a look, and taking the time to post information about the coin, very insightful and useful. Would love to see your VF35 graded 1860-S example.
I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say I dug it up for free, but if I ever decided to sell it, it would go a long ways towards motels, gas money and batteries :occasion14:

HH,
Brian
 

Brian,

Congratulations on some wonderful finds. That quarter is a gem of a find! ...but I like the relics too!
 

Brian,

Congratulations on some wonderful finds. That quarter is a gem of a find! ...but I like the relics too!

Thanks! I love digging the relics too, but the key date seated quarter kind of overshadowed them a bit this trip :thumbsup:

HH,
Brian
 

Wow, you slayed the relics that trip!! I love the quarter and buttons!! Congrats on your hunt!
 

I might be one of just a few dedicated Seated quarter collectors who read this forum, so let me chime in on the rarity of the 1860-S quarter. First of all, yes, Banner. The 1860-S is very scarce, and nearly all available examples are worn down to lower grades. Yours appears to have XF details, which is rare. It has some environmental damage on its surfaces, but finding one of these with XF details is really, really tough.

Value range? $1,500 to $2,500 in an auction venue, I would guess. The value depends a lot on whether the surfaces are choice, average, corroded, etc. I previously owned an 1860-S quarter that was more worn (Fine/VF) and had been cleaned, but it still sold for somewhere around $1,200. More recently, I paid $8,000 for a VF35 graded 1860-S quarter in a PCGS holder, but it has the "perfect" original look that boosts the price to those levels. The point is that 1860-S quarters are very expensive, and you just dug a nice one up for free!

Rhedden, Your knowledge is well evident. It's great to have a numismatist, specific to this coin, chime in. We were sort of thinking in the $5k range now. But alas: you are probably right. Someone could bid it up based on the "liberty" details. Conversely, it could get bid "down" d/t the ground kiss. Your estimate seems logical though.

I was one of the other persons on the hunt with Brian. So I/we have a question for you: Given your estimate on the post-ezest persuasion value: How much could his coin have fetched based on the "pre" ezest pix ?

On his earlier post here, and elsewhere, there was several opinions of "clean vs not clean". And, as Brian said, there wasn't much to loose. Now that we're looking at the end results, it seems that AT WORST it was a "move sideways" (in value). Or would you say it brought the value up ? I can imagine a lot of buyers would bristle at the "pre" coin. And at least now it has great(er) eye appeal.
 

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