While working on my Bust Quarter book (published in 2008), I attempted to compile a condition census for all of the Bust Quarter die marriages. I spent many hours pouring through auction catalogs and through online auction archives from the major auction houses. What I found truly amazed me. I knew that Bust Quarters were much rarer than many of their other bust series brethren, but not only were they rare overall, they were conditionally rare as well. In fact, many times I found that the same coin would appear multiple times at multiple auction houses and even in different Third Party Graded (TPG) slabs, sometimes at different grade levels.

While going through everything, I kept wishing that someone had an up to date list of auction appearances that I could gather the information from, such as the Auction & Mail Bid Prices Realized for Bust Halves 1794 - 1839 (or AMBPR) published bi-annually by Steve Herrman for the last 16 years. This is a tremendous compilation that is chock full of great information for the collector. Once I had compiled the data to produce a reasonable condition census (including pieces I knew other collectors owned), I decided to try and produce a similar compilation for the Bust Quarters.

While Herrman’s AMBPR only covers the R-4 and above die marriages due to the larger amount of Bust Halves in the marketplace, I decided to include every die marriage and every grade of Bust Quarters sold at auction, at least for the last 5 years in my work. To keep the length reasonable however, I have set forth certain criteria.

Although I have an extensive library of auction catalogs, I am sure there are coins that have been missed. It would be very much appreciated if anyone can provide any additional information for the next issue.