2007-S Washington Proof

Washington's state quarter put two of the Evergreen State's defining icons into a single composition: a king salmon leaping mid-arc above stylized water, with Mount Rainier's glaciated cone rising in the background. Charles Vickers sculpted the reverse, and the proof format does extraordinary things with the layering. The salmon reads frosted and dimensional against polished water, scales catching light in ways that the matte business strike simply cannot reproduce, while Rainier's snowfields and crevasses register as crisp tonal steps rather than the slightly blurred peak you see on circulation pieces. "The Evergreen State" curves below. The design was selected after a competitive process at the state level, and Washingtonians wanted both the Cascadian volcano and the salmon that anchors regional identity from the Salish Sea to the Columbia Basin. Holding a Deep Cameo proof, you understand why they pushed for both.

The San Francisco Mint struck 2,374,778 clad proofs of this issue, a figure consistent across all five 2007 designs as the Proof Set program delivered matched quintets to subscribers. Authentication begins with the field reflectivity: genuine proofs show watery, mirror-deep fields produced by polishing both dies and planchets before striking under elevated pressure, while prooflike business strikes betray themselves through radial flow lines running outward from the centers. Examine the rims for the squared, sharp profile that close-collar proof striking produces, distinct from the slightly rounded shoulders on a normal Philadelphia or Denver coin. Under a 10x loupe, die-polish lines run in tight parallel patterns across the open fields, while cleaning hairlines scatter randomly in multiple directions. The cupronickel-clad specification reads 5.67 grams and 24.3 millimeters, with a thin copper sandwich visible at the edge. Cameo and Deep Cameo designations from PCGS or NGC command real premiums, particularly on the salmon's frosted relief.

To see how the 2007 quintet, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, slots into the overall release schedule and how proof mintages tracked subscription demand across the decade, see the 50 State Quarters series history.