“Spirit of 76” Error Quarter

An employee of Littleton Coin Company in New Hampshire has discovered an unusual production error in a bag of uncirculated 2026 Mayflower Compact quarters from the Philadelphia Mint. 

The first of five new quarters issued to celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, this coin features a pilgrim couple on the obverse and the Mayflower ship on the reverse. Known as a struck-through error, the production mistake appears on the obverse as an incuse impression between GOD and WE in the motto IN GOD WE TRUST and between the dual dates 1776 and 2026.

“I was excited by the find,” says Greg Caplan, an inventory specialist at Littleton Coin Company who first noticed the error as he was preparing bags of quarters to be packaged. “There’s a thrill in finding coins like this. First thing I did was run the few I found to our coin buyers to make them aware.”

Ken Westover, Littleton’s chief coin buyer, posits that the sizable indentation occurred from a foreign element that was likely stuck to the die. “The U.S. Mint produces billions of coins annually. The number of errors escaping their quality control is an extremely small number. Finding such an error is rare today,” Westover says. “With the anticipated popularity of this new design, along with the scarcity of this error, this discovery will create a lot of excitement with collectors.”

These pieces have been dubbed the “Spirit of 76” Mayflower Compact quarters due to the location of the error. Littleton Coin Company is offering examples of the error coin on its website for $49.95.

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