1862-S

The 1862-S Seated Liberty Quarter is a low-mintage San Francisco delivery from the second Civil War year, with 67,000 pieces struck on the 6.22-gram post-1853 standard. The figure sits just above the 56,000 1860-S mintage and reads as a small production even for the typically modest S-Mint quarter output of the early 1860s. The San Francisco facility's primary task remained refining and striking California gold, and silver coinage worked the presses as bullion supply allowed; the Pacific coast economy continued to move on specie through the war years while eastern silver disappeared into Northern hoards. The 1862-S therefore entered active circulation on the West Coast and stayed there, and survivors carry the heavy use that defines San Francisco silver coinage of the period. The issue belongs to the No Arrows, No Motto subtype and shows no special design marker for the wartime moment.

Strike follows the familiar San Francisco pattern, with softness on Liberty's head, the upper shield lines, and the eagle's right (viewer's left) leg feathers. The central reverse loses definition first on later die states, while obverse stars and date usually render adequately when the dies were fresh. Graders separate this die-related weakness from honest wear by checking whether the surrounding fields retain any cartwheel luster, the rotating sheen of original mint surface that survives only on unworn coins. Authentication centers on the S mintmark below the eagle, which should sit cleanly inside original mint surface and show no tooling halo or color mismatch suggesting transplantation from a Philadelphia piece to fake branch-mint scarcity. Weight on a genuine planchet falls within tolerance of 6.22 grams, and modern struck counterfeits sometimes miss the figure or show mushy claw detail under loupe inspection. Briggs catalogs the year's working die marriages, with reverse die cracks and mintmark placement carrying the attribution weight, and the small population of legitimate die pairings makes attribution comparatively clean.

For a date-set builder, the 1862-S is a Semi-Key that surfaces in circulated grades through Very Fine at meaningful premiums and climbs sharply through Extremely Fine and above. Mint State examples are condition rare, with original-skin coins above MS62 firmly in specialist territory. Professional Coin Grading Service or Numismatic Guaranty Company encapsulation is the standard for any coin above About Uncirculated, since cleaning and altered surfaces remain the most common defects on West Coast survivors of the period. For the broader story of Gobrecht's design and the series' Civil War-era production, see the Seated Liberty Quarter series history.