Miami Valley Coin Club

2000: The Year of The $1.25 Mule

A mule is the offspring of a donkey and a horse. The term “mule” in numismatics is usually used to describe the mating of two different denominations on a single coin.

In the year 2000, the die for the obverse of a statehood Washington quarter was “mated” to the reverse of a Sacagawea dollar die. The result was a short run of $1.25 mule coins. At the time of their discovery these mules were selling for tens of thousands of dollars.

After an intense investigation, the Secret Service charged two former employees of the Philadelphia Mint with selling these coins to dealers and collectors. One dealer managed to purchase 7 of the 10 coins that were known of at that time, paying a whopping $600,000 for them.

To date, 15 of these mule coins are known and have been certified. A single collector owns 11 of them. The highest, publicly known price that he paid for a single coin was $117,500 at a Stacks Bowers auction in August of 2014.