1804

Seven years of silence ended in 1804, when the Philadelphia Mint resumed quarter dollar production after a complete halt from 1797 through 1803. The restart issue is the scarcest date in the entire 1804 to 1807 Heraldic Eagle quarter run, with a reported mintage of just 6,738 coins. The Heraldic Eagle reverse, borrowed from the Great Seal of the United States, debuted on the quarter denomination this year: a shield-breasted eagle clutching an olive branch in one talon and a bundle of arrows in the other, the motto E PLURIBUS UNUM on a ribbon at its beak, and a cloud of thirteen stars above. Robert Scot's draped portrait of Liberty fills the obverse, hair tied with a ribbon, drapery at the bust line, thirteen stars and the date framing the field. Mintage and survivorship sit far below the dates that followed, and the issue is consistently called the toughest date in the four-year series.

Authentication matters more on this date than on any other Draped Bust quarter. A genuine 1804 was struck on a planchet of 89.24 percent silver and 10.76 percent copper, and a problem-free piece weighs close to 6.74 grams on a calibrated scale; a soft, light, or porous body under a 10x loupe is a red flag for a cast counterfeit. The harder fraud to catch is a date alteration. Forgers have historically taken a common-date 1805, 1806, or 1807 quarter and reworked the final digit into a 4, so collectors should study the digit shape and the field around it for tooling marks, raised metal, or unnatural rounding. Only the Heraldic Eagle reverse is correct for this date; the Small Eagle reverse ended on quarters in 1796. Coins of this value should be in a Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) or Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) holder, what dealers call a third-party graded (TPG) slab. Raw examples are essentially unsellable at full retail.

Surviving population estimates run well under one thousand pieces across all grades, and Mint State (MS) coins are five-figure to six-figure rarities at auction. Heritage and Stack's Bowers records place top survivors in the MS62 to MS64 range, with the Pogue and Eliasberg specimens among the recognized benchmarks. Most examples that reach the market grade Good to Very Fine and show the soft, often weakly struck centers typical of the issue. The 1804 quarter sits in its own corner of early American numismatics and should not be confused with the 1804 dollar, which was actually struck in 1834 as a diplomatic presentation piece, or with the 1804 dime. For full context on production, design changes, and the rest of the run, see the Draped Bust Quarter series history.