1896-S 25C Barber Quarter Dollar, PCGS VF20 (CAC) - Key Date of Series

NGC Coin Explorer writes, "This is the first of the Big Three rarities in the Barber Quarter series that make its completion so challenging to collectors. It appears that the distressed economy really caught up with the San Francisco Mint, as [that] year's production is among the lowest recorded for the coin type. Examples are rare in all grades .... It's possible that the value of this date/mint prompts multiple submissions of the same coins, skewing the census data a bit."

Numismatic scholar and art critic Cornelius Vermeule writes that, "The designs of Barber's coins were more attuned to the times than even he perhaps realized." Continuing, the scholar writes, "Of all American coins long in circulation, no series has stood the wearing demands of modern coinage so well as the half dollar, quarter dollar, and dime developed by the chief engraver at Philadelphia....Even when these coins have been worn nearly smooth, their outlines suggest the harmony of interior detail in careful planes of relief that make Uncirculated specimens a pleasure to contemplate. The sculptor was unsurpassed in the mechanics of creating a durable design of monumental validity."