Squared Quarters Round Out Some Collector Want Lists

Have you ever heard about the 1984 Squared Quarter? This isn’t some eccentric United States Mint variety or a clever post-mint alteration. Rather, it’s the creation of a German-born artist named Andor Orand, who became most famous for his exonumismatic spawn known as the Squared Quarter. Conceived in 1972 and brought to fruition a decade later in 1982, the Squared Quarter was a novelty sold to the public with the aim of making a sociopolitical statement.

“Squaring the circle is the image used to describe the predicament of Reaganomics,” said Orand, referencing a trickle-down economic policy popularized by then-sitting President Ronald Reagan. “The square quarter is coined representing this dilemma; supply-side policy which stimulates growth, wedded to monetarist policy which stifles it,” he continued in a November 7, 1982, New York Times article by noted numismatic journalist Ed Reiter.

The “1984” date of the quarter-ounce and half-ounce silver Squared Quarters carries importance as Orand remarked, referencing what was then the next year of the presidential election, the year by when President Reagan had promised to balance the nation’s budget, and is an ominous allusion to the title of a dystopian novel by satirical novelist George Orwell.

Squaring of the George Washington and Heraldic Eagle designs that originally appeared on the quarter against a round canvas were distorted relative to their proportions on the square piece by use of computer technology. The edge of the Squared Quarter is also reeded, just like its circular legal-tender antecedent. The tokens were then produced by Medallic Art Company in Connecticut, which struck 300 copper-nickel-zinc specimens, 1,310 in a quarter-ounce .999-fine silver format, 602 in a half-ounce .999-fine profile, 12 with a .999-fine gold composition weighing 0.3056 ounces, 15 bronze examples, and an indeterminate number made from brass, along with some lead strikes and possibly others yet unaccounted for.

The Squared Quarters were marketed under the banner Square Deal Productions, Inc., which sold the quarter-ounce silver pieces for $37 each, while the half-ounce silver offerings were $47 apiece. These prices were significantly above the prevailing spot price of between $5 and $11 per ounce, which was the average going rate for the silver precious metal during the time this piece was sold from 1982 through 1984.

While silver stackers may have had to pay a solid premium to buy this piece for their bullion hoards, the Squared Quarter is much more than just a geometrically unusual silver medal. It’s a true collectible with roots in the politically satirical Hard Times Tokens that cropped up in the United States beginning in the 1830s. Meanwhile, square relics of the numismatic sort aren’t exactly unheard of. Many nations have issued coins struck on square planchets going back to the times of antiquity; among the countries that have struck squared coins in modern times are Aruba, India, Maldives, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

Meanwhile the 1984 Squared Quarters continue to get looks by collectors, many of whom were born after these pieces were minted or were around at the time but unaware of these relatively obscure and wholly unorthodox collectibles. PCGS authenticates, grades, and encapsulates 1984 Squared Quarters, with a record price going to a specimen graded PCGS PR67 that sold on eBay for $490 in 2019.

Sources

• Bailey, Clement F. “Squared Quarter Puts Fun Back in Hobby.” The Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin). October 29, 1982.
• Cuhaj, George S. and Thomas Michael. Unusual World Coins. Krause Publications, 2011.
• Gilkes, Paul. “First Square Commemoratives on Baseball.” Coin World. July 26, 2018. Accessed October 13, 2021.
• Orand, Andor. “Squaring the Circle.” Square Deal. 2019. Accessed October 13, 2021. http://www.sqrdl.com/
• Reiter, Ed. “’Squared Quarter’ Satirizes the U.S. Economy.” The New York Times. November 7, 1982.
• Thomassen, John. “Squaring the Circle: The Andor Orand Squared Quarter.” CoinWeek (Originally Appeared via American Numismatic Society). April 27, 2021. Accessed October 13, 2021.