The strong strike of this particular 1965 quarter suggests it may once have been a member of a “Special Mint Set,” coin sets which were supposed to have consisted of specially-selected circulation strikes and were assembled and sold by the Mint as a stand-in for America’s then-suspended proof coinage.
American proof coinage, of course, had been a casualty of the coin shortage—as were mintmarks. (Note that the absence of a mintmark on this 1965 does not mean, as was customary at the time, a Philadelphia product.)
1965 quarters like this one were the first of the new clad coins to be seen by the wider American public. “Clads” because of their layered construction, which had been designed to mimic the signatures of the silver coins then circulating, and done so the changeover would require no wholesale change in the country’s vending machines and pay telephones.
Clad coinage began in August ‘65, with the new quarters being issued beginning in November. I can still remember Mom and Dad looking over these first new “sandwich” (as an epithet) quarters while they stood in the living room.
For my part, I have to admit being rather fascinated by the interplay between the bright copper core and the shiny copper-nickel at the coins’ edges. But I was unaware of their deeper meaning—that we were about to lose our silver coinage.
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