RCD-25c-1930S-03 Retained Cud

Description

Third retained cud documented for the 1930-S Standing Liberty Quarter, this variety records a die rim fracture on the final San Francisco Mint issue of Hermon Atkins MacNeil's acclaimed quarter design. The Standing Liberty Quarter was produced from 1916 through 1930, and the 1930-S represents its terminal year — only 1930 Philadelphia and San Francisco strikes were issued before the Washington Quarter replaced the design in 1932, with no quarters of any type struck in 1931. San Francisco's 1930 quarter mintage of approximately 1.76 million pieces was among the lower outputs in the series, making die varieties on this date both scarce and significant to collectors who view terminal-year varieties as end-of-era artifacts. A retained cud indicates that the die rim fractured during production but the broken piece remained attached, producing coins with a cracked, distorted rim area that preserves partial design detail rather than the featureless mass left by a full cud separation. Three documented retained cuds for the 1930-S indicates that multiple dies experienced rim failure during the final year of production — potentially accelerated by the design's high-relief characteristics that concentrated striking pressure at the rim. Cataloged by Cuds on Coins with documentation dated September 10, 2018, RCD-25c-1930S-03 joins a small but significant group of die failure varieties from the Standing Liberty Quarter's final year that document production conditions at the close of this artistically important series.

Attribution History

• Discovered by Chuck Newman
• Cross reference: none. 09/10/2018.
• Expert attribution by Cuds on Coins

External References