Draped Bust Quarter Eagles (1796–1807)

The Quarter Eagle Was the Last of the Three Authorized Gold Denominations to Enter Production

The Coinage Act of April 2, 1792 authorized three gold denominations: the eagle ($10), the half eagle ($5), and the quarter eagle ($2.50). Half eagles and eagles entered production in 1795; the quarter eagle waited until 1796. For the obverse, Chief Engraver Robert Scot used the Capped Bust Right portrait he had introduced on the half eagle and eagle in 1795, a different head from the Draped Bust then in use on the silver dollar, although PCGS and NGC catalogue the gold series under the Draped Bust name. Liberty faces right, her hair loosely dressed with a ribbon, wearing a soft cap that Mint Director Samuel Moore would later identify not as an ancient liberty cap but as a fashionable headdress of the 1790s. LIBERTY is inscribed above the bust and the date appears below. The reverse bears a Heraldic Eagle, Robert Scot's adaptation of the Great Seal of the United States, with a shield on the eagle's breast, E PLURIBUS UNUM on a ribbon in its beak, and its talons holding a bundle of arrows and an olive branch. Stars arc over the eagle's head. The denomination $2.50 does not appear on the coin.¹

The 1796 No Stars Is a One-Year Type and the Rarest Coin Required for a Complete Type Set

The first quarter eagles, with a total delivery of 963 pieces, were struck without stars on the obverse. The reasoning appears to have been that the stars were already placed on the reverse as part of the Heraldic Eagle design, making obverse stars redundant; later in 1796 Scot cut a second obverse die with 16 stars, one for each state then in the Union, arranged eight to the left and eight to the right of the bust. The 1796 No Stars is the only regular-issue quarter eagle struck without obverse stars, making it a one-year type essential to any complete type set of United States coinage. Of an estimated 100 to 125 survivors out of the 963 struck, the typical example grades Extremely Fine to About Uncirculated; published estimates of Mint State pieces run from about seven to fifteen, and the finest known grades Mint State 65. The companion 1796 With Stars, delivered in a single batch of 432 pieces on January 14, 1797, is rarer still in absolute numbers, with only 40 to 50 thought to survive, but it commands less market premium because the With Stars design continued through 1807 and type collectors are not limited to the single 1796 date to represent it. A 1796 No Stars of the BD-2 variety graded PCGS About Uncirculated 50 brought $168,000 as lot 2004 in Stack's Bowers Galleries' August 2025 Global Showcase Auction.²

Low Mintages Persisted Because Depositors Preferred Larger Denominations

In the early Philadelphia Mint, gold coins were struck primarily on demand, when depositors brought bullion and requested a specific denomination in return. Breen observed that during the entire period from 1796 through 1807, quarter eagles were coined only in isolated small batches of a few hundred or at most a few thousand pieces; depositors consistently chose the half eagle as more convenient for commerce and the eagle for large overseas transactions. The quarter eagle was too valuable to replace silver in daily transactions, and wholesale trade was settled in larger coins. No quarter eagles were struck in 1799, 1800, 1801, or 1803, and the years that did see production had mintages dwarfed by the half eagle's. The entire Draped Bust quarter eagle series produced approximately 19,487 coins across eight dates, less than a single common-date Morgan dollar issue of the 1880s.³

The 1804 Thirteen Stars Reverse Is the Series Key Among the Later Dates

After 1796, subsequent quarter eagle obverse dies carried 13 stars rather than 16, distributed in varying configurations. The 1804 appears with two distinct reverses: a Fourteen Stars reverse (the more common variety, with a mintage share that accounts for most of the combined 1804 output of 3,327 coins) and a Thirteen Stars reverse so rare that fewer than a dozen examples are believed to exist in all grades. The 1804 Thirteen Stars is the single most challenging later date in the series to locate in any grade. The 1797, struck in very small numbers, is also a major rarity; the 1798 is scarce; and the 1802, which is catalogued by some references as an overdate (1802/1), though the repunching is indistinct and NGC no longer recognizes it as such, has a recorded mintage of 3,035. The 1807 carries the series' largest single-date mintage at 6,812 pieces and is the most available Draped Bust quarter eagle for collectors seeking a well-struck, attractive type representative without the premium of the 1796 dates.⁴

Building the Set

A type set of this design requires either the 1796 No Stars (one-year type, carrying a substantial premium for that status) or any date from 1796 With Stars through 1807, with the 1807 being the most practical choice in higher circulated and lower Mint State grades. The 1796 No Stars is among the most expensive coins required to complete any standard United States type set, and a buyer should learn to judge condition rarity and surface integrity in early gold before bidding on one. The complete date-and-variety set, encompassing the No Stars, the With Stars, and all subsequent production dates through 1807, has few entries, yet no date is common, several are very rare, and the 1804 Thirteen Stars may require years of waiting for an opportunity to bid. Gem (Mint State 65 or finer) examples of any date are extraordinary. Most advanced collectors working toward a complete set accept Extremely Fine to About Uncirculated as realistic targets for the majority of dates, reserving the effort to find higher-grade pieces for the dates where they are at least occasionally available. The primary specialist reference is Bowers, Q. David, A Guide Book of Quarter Eagle Gold Coins (Atlanta: Whitman Publishing, 2022).⁵