1862

The 1862 Seated Liberty Quarter is a moderate Philadelphia delivery from the second full Civil War year, with 932,550 pieces struck on the 6.22-gram post-1853 standard. The figure represents a sharp pullback from the 4.85-million output of 1861, reflecting the shift in monetary demand once Treasury Notes (the new "greenback" paper currency authorized by the Legal Tender Act of February 25, 1862) entered general circulation. The greenbacks were inconvertible to specie, and silver coin began trading at a premium to face once paper money depreciated against gold and silver. Northern public response was to hoard silver, and quarters that did leave Philadelphia in 1862 mostly disappeared into mattresses and strongboxes through the war's middle years. The issue belongs to the No Arrows, No Motto subtype and carries no special design marker for the wartime moment. Most genuine 1862 quarters that surface today either sat in hoarded holdings for decades before re-entering the numismatic market or circulated lightly on the West Coast where specie still moved freely.

Strike on the date is generally solid for the late No Motto period, with Liberty's head, the obverse stars, and the shield lines rendering cleanly when the dies were fresh. Softness, where present, tends to settle on the eagle's right (viewer's left) leg feathers and the lower shield rivets on later die states. Because so many 1862 quarters were saved out of circulation early through hoarding, Mint State survivors are proportionally more common than the mintage figure alone would suggest, and original-skin pieces at MS63 through MS65 surface with reasonable frequency. Authentication is straightforward; counterfeits target the Carson City and low-mintage S-Mint dates rather than this Philadelphia issue. Weight should fall within tolerance of 6.22 grams on a 24.3-millimeter reeded planchet, and the plain reverse field above the eagle confirms the subtype, the motto IN GOD WE TRUST did not arrive on the quarter until 1866. Briggs catalogs the year's working die marriages, with date position relative to the lowest curl and rock, plus reverse die cracks, supplying the standard attribution diagnostics.

For a date-set builder, the 1862 is a reasonably available Civil War Philadelphia issue in circulated grades and a fair target for a problem-free Mint State coin owing to early hoarding that preserved original-skin survivors. Above MS65 the population thins and premiums escalate, with surface quality driving the spread. The issue carries genuine greenback-era resonance as a coin caught between competing money standards. For the broader story of Gobrecht's design and the series' Civil War-era production, see the Seated Liberty Quarter series history.