Bargain Collector: Five-Ounce Silver Quarters, Really?
With silver retreating from triple-digit highs, America the Beautiful five-ounce quarters may be quietly aligning bullion value with collector opportunity.
The price of gold and silver took a definite, enormous leap a month or so ago, with silver jumping to levels higher than $100 per ounce. At that particular moment, a lot of collectors probably thought it was time to take a break from buying and certainly from buying big. It just seemed too costly. But a couple of things have happened of late. First, the prices of precious metals have dropped, with silver being as low as $78 per ounce in early February. Second, the prices of proof silver pieces in numerous series have, in many cases, evened out with the prices of what can be called their “regular” counterparts. Let’s take a peek at this, specifically in our America the Beautiful five-ounce quarters program. There may just be some attractive pieces waiting for us.
The lingo
As we get started, it is worth getting a couple of terms firmly in mind. The Mint did not produce proofs of these big 5-ounce “quarters” – with their 0.999 fineness of silver and their 3-inch diameter. Rather, they produced what the numismatic references generally call “bullion” pieces to a select group of authorized dealers. Those dealers then sold to the general public, be they collectors or investors. The Mint also produced what they termed “burnished” pieces and sold them directly to the public. But since the series came to an end in 2021, there has been the passage of enough time that some folks probably get the two confused. It’s not a problem; rather, we might be able to use this to our advantage.
The low mintages
From the very start, these huge coins were viewed differently by two different camps. The folks who wanted to buy silver as an investment found this a convenient way to do so. No need to buy five of the one-ounce silver Eagles; simply purchase one of these big guns, and you have a good investment. But the pure collectors found this series to be more of a challenge. After all, the burnished pieces often seemed to go down in value almost immediately after purchase, and many started at a couple of hundred dollars. So, at least, with the prices the Mint had attached to these big disks, there appeared to be some immediate dips in value, and some complaints in the collector community.
Perhaps because of the drop in value that has occurred, or perhaps because the authorized dealers were willing and eager to move the bullion pieces to the public, several dates emerged for which the burnished pieces ended up being rather scarce. Not too many years into the program, in 2012, the Maine quarter, sporting the Acadia National Park image, as well as the Hawaii piece, with the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park image, both saw less than 15K of the burnished specimens sold to the public.
As experienced collectors might have expected, the tail end of the series sports some of the lowest mintages, perhaps because the market was getting saturated with big silver. The U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as Vermont and Kansas, all had their five-ounce quarters issued in 2020. And their mintages were the lowest of the series to that date, with none even making it to 14K burnished pieces. When compared to all the other dates and designs in the series, these were not absolutely minuscule totals. But they can be considered keys.
Where to purchase
With this warm-up, it’s fair to ask, just where might we buy any of these biggest United States coins today? After all, the Mint no longer has them up on their website. The first place to look then is most likely any well-stocked dealer you know, whether you only see them a couple of times a year at some show, or much more frequently at their shop, whenever you’d like. Not to disparage any other ways of purchasing, but there is something very satisfying about direct, hand-to-hand sales. Plus, if you’ve built a friendly relationship with a dealer, you might end up getting something of a bargain right there. After all, most dealers are keenly aware of what they spent to purchase an item in their inventory.
As well, our friends at the 24-7 bazaars that are eBay and Etsy offer further ways to purchase any of the five-ounce quarters, whether or not they are the low mintage dates and designs. Prices with online sellers sometimes are all over the board. Yet some patient searching may reveal a good-looking quarter with those magic words, “Or best offer” attached to it. This could then become another means of adding to your collection, five ounces at a time.
Bargains overall?
It’s tough to determine whether or not the prices of any of the America the Beautiful five-ounce silver, burnished quarters automatically qualify as a bargain. After all, in late January 2026, the price of silver rose to just over $100 per troy ounce, as mentioned. That means one of these would cost a minimum of $500 just for the metal in it. Even in February, when the price went down below $80 per ounce, the value of the silver is still about $400. Yet none of us has a working crystal ball for which we can flip a switch and see just what the price of any precious metal will be in one or two years. Since the five-ounce quarters that are the most common and those that are the least all tend to cost about the same, we might now be looking at some bargains for the near future. It’s never wise to purchase coins with money we will need to pay the bills. However, these five-ounce silver pieces, in the heaviest series the Mint has ever produced, do indeed have some potential as bargains.
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