1974 quarter no mint mark: where it's from, what it's worth

A 1974 quarter with no mint mark (the small letter that shows which mint made the coin) was made in Philadelphia, and if it has been spent and handled it is worth 25 cents. The US Mint's own page on mint marks says a coin with no letter "signifies Philadelphia". On a 1974 quarter the letter, if there is one, sits on the front, to the right of Washington's portrait. Philadelphia made 801,456,000 quarters dated 1974, a figure PCGS and NGC (the two big grading services) give identically. Denver made another 353,160,300, marked D, and San Francisco made 2,612,568 mirror-finished proofs for collectors, marked S. CoinWeek writes that worn Washington quarters "carry no numismatic premium", and NGC's price guide lists a circulated one at $0.30.

Nothing about the coin is rare. PCGS estimated on October 20, 2026 that 240,436,800 of the Philadelphia coins still exist, and it gives the date its lowest rarity rating (R-1.0, the rating PCGS gives its most common coins). Some 1974-dated quarters were actually made in 1975, because a law President Ford signed on December 26, 1974 let the Mint keep using the 1974 date until the Bicentennial design began, according to Wikipedia's history of the Bicentennial coinage. Nobody has published how many.

Is there a 1974 quarter doubled die or other rare variety?

No. A variety is a flaw in the die itself, the steel tool that stamps the design, so every coin from that die carries it, and collectors catalog the ones that matter. NGC's VarietyPlus catalog came back empty for 1974 when we queried it on October 20, 2026: nothing from any mint, among either the circulation coins or the proofs. PCGS CoinFacts has nothing under Major Varieties for 1974 except the 1974 quarter itself.

What does exist is a scattering of one-off mint errors, where a single coin went wrong in the press. Those are below, with what they actually sold for.

Is a 1974 quarter silver?

No. A normal 1974 quarter is clad (copper-nickel faces bonded to a copper core) and holds no silver. The silver claim you may have read comes from one article. CoinWeek, in a 2022 article written for the bullion dealer Gainesville Coins, says "the 1974 and 1977 quarters that were accidentally struck on 40% silver-clad planchets" (the planchet is the metal blank that goes between the dies) are "very rare and valuable, generally selling for more than $1,000 each." The article names no sale, no auction house and no date for a 1974 one.

We looked for one twice, on September 21 and October 20, 2026: NGC Auction Central, the archived Heritage error lots for the date, PCGS auction prices, and searches of Heritage, Stack's Bowers and GreatCollections. We found no auction record of a 1974 quarter on a silver planchet. The 1974 silver-planchet errors that do appear in auction records are Eisenhower dollars from Denver, a different coin. The 40% silver quarters the Mint did strike on purpose are the 1976-S Bicentennial collector coins, about nine million of them by CoinWeek's count, and they carry an S.

A kitchen scale will not settle it either. By CoinWeek's figures a clad quarter weighs 5.67 grams and a 40% silver one 5.75, while a normal quarter may run 0.22 grams either way, so the two overlap. A coin you suspect needs a metal test by a dealer or a grading service.

You may also see a "$10,925 1974 quarter" repeated on value-guide sites. We found it on a blog with no lot number and no house, and nowhere else. The highest price PCGS records for any 1974 Philadelphia quarter is $2,115, and that sale is described below the grade table.

1974 quarter errors and what they sold for

These are the 1974 Philadelphia error coins with a lot number and a price behind them. Heritage sold all three and hides its prices from anyone not signed in; the prices come from NGC Auction Central, which lists the same lots and includes the buyer's fee. Grades like MS64 (MS means "mint state", a coin that never circulated) are explained in the next section; NGC, PCGS and ANACS are grading services. Brown is the grading service's word for the copper's toned color.

A die cap happens when a struck coin sticks to the die and the die keeps stamping through it. "Struck through" means something sat between the die and the blank. The collar is the steel ring that holds a coin in place while it is struck.

Heritage has sold other 1974 errors whose prices we could not read: one struck on a nickel planchet (MS63 PCGS, September 29, 2013, lot 1189-10193), one double struck with the second strike 80% off center (MS63 PCGS, October 6, 2021, lot 60222-92408), and one struck 10% off center (MS64 ANACS, March 8, 2021, lot 60192-92253). We found no recorded sale, with a lot number and a price, of a 1974 Philadelphia quarter stamped too wide or cut from a damaged blank.

Every one of these coins looks clearly wrong next to normal change: the wrong size, the design pushed off the edge, or a second image. A thin doubled outline lying flat against the letters is something else, damage done by the press after the strike, and it adds nothing. Telling an error from damage walks through both.

What an uncirculated (never spent) 1974 quarter is worth

Coins that were never spent are graded from MS60 to MS70 (MS stands for mint state), where a higher number means a cleaner surface. A "+" means slightly better than that grade. How grading works explains the scale. Here is what the two big grading services' price guides list:

PCGS's guide was read on September 21, 2026 and NGC's was last updated on March 24, 2022, so treat both as a rough guide.

The jump at MS67 is about supply. PCGS's Jaime Hernandez writes that anything above MS67 "is considered very scarce to rare". On October 20, 2026, PCGS had graded 30 Philadelphia 1974 quarters at MS67 and 3 at MS67+, none higher. NGC's count of graded coins had 324 in all, with the same top grade. Denver's 1974 quarter reaches MS68 at NGC. Philadelphia's does not.

The most any 1974 Philadelphia quarter has sold for is $2,115, for an MS67+ graded by PCGS (Legend Rare Coin Auctions, Regency Auction 40, lot 141, August 27, 2020). Plain MS67 coins sold for $101 to $382 at Heritage between 2013 and 2019 (prices from NGC Auction Central), and the newest one PCGS lists, at Stack's Bowers, brought $104 in July 2026. At MS66, GreatCollections sold four PCGS coins for $13.59 to $25 in 2012 and 2013.

The 1974 half dollar with no mint mark has its own page, the 1978 quarter is the same unmarked Philadelphia coin four years later, and the quarter mint mark hub covers every date from 1932 to 1979.

How to check the quarter in your hand

Weigh it on a scale that reads to two decimal places. A normal one is 5.67 grams and about 24.3 millimeters across (the Mint's current specification says 24.26). The edge has grooves all the way round, and on the edge you should see a thin copper-colored band, which is the copper core between the two copper-nickel faces. A 1974 quarter far off that weight, or with a smooth edge, is worth a closer look; the one struck on a cent blank weighed 3.1 grams. If there is a letter next to Washington, a D means Denver and an S means a proof from a collector set, and a coin with no letter is never a proof.

A photo cannot give a weight or a metal test, and it cannot settle a grade. If a coin looks wrong, take it to a dealer or send it to PCGS or NGC before anyone puts a price on it, and leave it uncleaned, since a cleaned coin loses value.

Buck is ours, so read this with that in mind. Photograph the front, then the back, one coin each time, and it names the coin as a Washington quarter and shows the estimate a price guide puts on the type. It keeps no 1974 figures of its own and has no scale. It cannot grade from a picture either, and grade is what decides the price of a normal 1974 quarter.

What this page is based on: the United States Mint's pages on mint marks and coin specifications; PCGS CoinFacts for the mintages, the survival figure, the population, the top sale and Jaime Hernandez's remark on MS67; the PCGS price guide for the table; NGC Coin Explorer for the cross-checked mintages, weight, census and price guide, NGC VarietyPlus for the empty variety list, and NGC Auction Central for every Heritage price; Heritage's own lot pages for what each error coin is; CoinWeek for the face-value quote, the mint mark position, the clad weights and the silver planchet claim; and Wikipedia's history of the Bicentennial coinage for the 1974 coins struck in 1975. Everything was read on October 20, 2026, except the PCGS guide page and CoinWeek's clad-quarter and 1972-D articles, read on September 21, 2026.