It currently costs a little over 11 cents to make a U.S. quarter, even though its face value is 25 cents. That cost includes metal, labor, minting, and distribution.

Quick Scoop

What’s the current cost?

  • Recent U.S. Mint data for fiscal year 2023 put the unit cost of a quarter around 11.6 cents per coin.
  • Other 2024–2025 estimates for “all–in” quarter production are in the same ballpark, typically around 11–13 cents per coin.
  • That means each 25‑cent coin still earns the government a profit (“seigniorage”) of roughly 12–14 cents per quarter.

Why is it so expensive?

A modern quarter is made from a copper‑nickel “clad” sandwich: a pure copper core with outer layers of a copper–nickel alloy. The main cost drivers are:

  • Metal prices: Copper and nickel are globally traded commodities whose prices have climbed over the last decade.
  • Minting costs: Operating high‑precision presses, dies, and quality‑control systems adds several cents per coin once you include energy and maintenance.
  • Labor and facilities: Skilled workers, security, and plant overhead are all baked into the per‑coin cost.
  • Distribution: Getting coins from mints to Federal Reserve banks and then into circulation adds logistics costs.

Is a quarter still “worth it” to make?

  • Yes. Unlike the penny and the nickel, which cost more than their face value to produce, the quarter still brings in positive seigniorage.
  • For 2023, quarter production generated hundreds of millions of dollars in net revenue for the U.S. government.
  • This makes the quarter one of the most economically efficient coins still in everyday circulation.

A quick perspective example

If it costs about 11.6 cents to make one quarter and the Mint struck, say, 2.5 billion quarters in a year, production would cost roughly $290 million and the face value would be about $625 million. The difference—around $335 million—would be seigniorage revenue, before overhead from other Mint operations.

TL;DR: It costs a bit over 11 cents to make a U.S. quarter today, mostly because of metal and minting costs, but the government still makes solid profit on every coin.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.