2025-S Ida B. Wells Proof

San Francisco produced 800,000 clad proof quarters honoring Ida B. Wells as part of the 2025 American Women Quarters Program collector offerings. Distribution moved through the annual proof set and the dedicated five-coin quarter proof set sold directly by the United States Mint. Wells, born enslaved in Mississippi in 1862, built her career on investigative journalism that documented the lynching of Black Americans across the post-Reconstruction South. Her pamphlets and lectures established a global audience for that reporting, and her later organizing helped establish the NAACP in 1909. The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded her a posthumous Special Citation in 2020 for her courage in reporting on racial violence. The proof issue places her portrait on a coin produced specifically for the collector market.

Christina Hess is credited with the reverse design through the Artistic Infusion Program, pending final verification of the attribution, presenting Wells alongside symbols of her journalism, including newspapers, a pen, or a quill. Laura Gardin Fraser's 1932 Washington portrait carries the obverse. The proof composition matches the circulating clad strike at 91.67 percent copper and 8.33 percent nickel bonded over a copper core, 5.67 grams in weight, 24.3 millimeters in diameter, with a reeded edge. Authentication of a San Francisco proof rests on the S mintmark verification on the obverse, the deeply mirrored fields surrounding frosted devices that produce cameo and deep cameo contrast, and the squared rim profile that proof striking pressure creates. Compare suspect pieces against the standard 5.67 gram weight to rule out planchet substitution.

Modern proofs grading PR69 Deep Cameo and PR70 Deep Cameo at Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) and Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) anchor collector demand, with PR70 examples drawing the strongest bids in registry competition. Original Mint packaging matters for raw examples and for collectors assembling intact annual sets. The closing year of the American Women series has driven attention toward complete sixteen-coin collections. Program background and legislative history appear on the Washington Quarters (American Women) series history.