1926-D 25C Standing Liberty Quarter PCGS MS64 (CAC)

Here’s an attractive piece to add to your collection. And it is being offered at a price that won’t break the bank! PCGS has graded 1,896 as MS64 with 399 finer. In CAC, there are 141 in MS64 with 64 finer. CAC gives this issue a price of $475.00 in MS64.

The Standing Liberty Quarter came to be as the result of an invitational competition for new silver coin designs that included three renowned sculptors: Adolph A. Weinman, Albin Polasek and Hermon MacNeil. It was in that manner that Hermon MacNeil won the commission to replace Charles E. Barber's 24-year-old Liberty Head design in 1916. 

Inspiration or imitation? Victor D. Brenner's 1909 Art Institute of Chicago Norman Wait Harris Prize medal (above, photo: American Numismatic Society) and Hermon A. MacNeil's Standing Liberty quarter (photo: Wikimedia Commons).

It could be argued that Hermon Atkins MacNeil borrowed heavily from available models created by other numismatic artists in order to craft his Standing Liberty design. The most striking example is the parapet and female figure upon a medal designed by Victor D. Brenner in 1909: the Norman Wait Harris Prize medal, which was issued by the Art Institute of Chicago.

Barbara A. Baxter, who penned the exhibit catalog, Beaux-Arts Medal in America, wrote that the Standing Liberty quarter is "based on the obverse" of that medal, and that the "palette and brushes of Brenner's female personification have been replaced with patriotic iconography, and the classical parapet is now decorated with thirteen stars and bears the motto 'In God We Trust.'"