1845

The 1845 quarter eagle posts a circulation mintage of 91,051 pieces, a substantial jump from the previous year's thin Philadelphia figure and the result of bullion deposits recovering at the parent Mint after the 1844 lull. Christian Gobrecht's Coronet design carried into its sixth production year unchanged, with the familiar mature Liberty bust on the obverse, thirteen stars surrounding the portrait, and the standard heraldic eagle reverse with shield and arrows. Date positioning on 1845 dies sits in the standard slanted style of the period, with closed-knob 4s and a tightly spaced 845 cluster that is consistent across surviving die varieties. Production took place at the parent Philadelphia facility on planchets weighing 4.18 grams at 0.900 fineness, the standard composition that had governed the denomination since the Coinage Act of 1837 reset gold weight downward and eliminated the earlier Capped Bust profile entirely.

Authentication relies first on the planchet specifications. A genuine 1845 quarter eagle weighs exactly 4.18 grams when struck and should still fall within reasonable tolerance of that figure even after circulation, with anything noticeably below 4.10 grams suggesting either heavy wear, a clipped planchet, or a counterfeit struck on underweight metal. The 18-millimeter diameter and fully reeded edge with consistent reeding count provide secondary screens, and any specimen with disturbed or filed reeding should be examined more carefully. The 90-percent gold composition tests to specific gravity near 17.2, a useful screen against gold-plated base metal counterfeits. Strike quality on most surviving examples is reasonably sharp through the central devices, with typical Philadelphia die work that does not show the granular planchet or soft strike characteristics of the contemporaneous southern branch issues.

Survivors are available in numbers that reflect the larger mintage, with VF and EF examples regularly available through dealer inventories and AU coins reasonably attainable. Mint State examples are scarcer than the mintage might suggest, since most of the production saw active circulation through the late 1840s and into the gold rush years that followed. Certified MS-62 and finer pieces command meaningful premiums but trade at far more accessible levels than the contemporaneous branch-mint issues. The 1845 functions effectively as a type coin for collectors building Coronet sets. See the full Liberty Head Quarter Eagle series history.