2017-S George Rogers Clark, NIFC

The 2017-S George Rogers Clark, NIFC closed the year's four-design NIFC run and pairs with another Enhanced Uncirculated catalog cousin: the 2017-S George Rogers Clark released through the U.S. Mint's 225th-anniversary Enhanced Uncirculated Coin Set. The NIFC strike under discussion here is the standard business-finish San Francisco quarter for the design, with mintage at 1,078,981 and no laser-etched device treatment. Frank Morris' reverse depicts George Rogers Clark wading through the flooded plains of the Wabash with his Virginia militia, dragging muskets and supplies behind him on the way to the 1779 surprise assault that captured Fort Sackville at Vincennes from the British. The site, now the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park in Indiana, was the location of the only American victory in the Old Northwest theater of the Revolutionary War.

Authentication for the issue separates from the Enhanced Uncirculated counterpart at the surfaces, not at any element of design. The NIFC coin shows ordinary cartwheel luster across the fields and standard relief frosting on the figures, while the Enhanced Uncirculated piece carries the muted-field satin treatment with laser-defined contrast on Clark and the militia line. Confusion between the two has appeared in resale listings where sellers misattributed the standard strike as Enhanced; the easiest authentication is the field reflectivity, which reads more luminous on the business strike than on the Enhanced version. The clad composition runs the standard 75% copper-nickel over a pure copper core at 5.67 grams, and PCGS and NGC certify both versions with explicit attribution.

The coin holds Regular classification, and its position in the 2017 NIFC group is closer to the Ellis Island case than to either Effigy Mounds or Frederick Douglass, since collectors active in the year-of-issue tend to chase the Enhanced Uncirculated version first. The roughly 1.08-million print figure for the standard NIFC strike covers ordinary set-builder demand without much strain, so MS67 examples remain available at modest premiums and raw coins out of broken Mint Sets serve the entry-level format. Frank Morris' figural composition, with its dynamic action across the flooded plain, gives the issue stronger visual interest than the year's quieter designs and supports registry-grade demand at the top of the curve. For the broader story of the ATB program and the NIFC collector-only product line, see the Washington ATB series history.