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Political pressure, not public demand, brought the Morgan dollar into
being. There was no
real need for a new silver dollar in the late 1870s; the last previous
"cartwheel," the Liberty Seated dollar, had been legislated out of existence in
1873, and hardly anyone missed it.
Silver-mining interests did miss the dollar, though, and lobbied Congress forcefully for
its return. The Comstock Lode in Nevada was yielding huge quantities of silver, with ore
worth $36 million being extracted annually.
After several futile attempts, the silver
forces in Congress led by Representative Richard ("Silver Dick") Bland of
Missouri finally succeeded in winning authorization for a new silver dollar when Congress
passed the Bland-Allison Act on February 28, 1878. This Act required the Treasury to
purchase at market levels between two million and four million troy ounces of silver
bullion every month to be coined into dollars. This amounted to a massive subsidy, coming
at a time when the dollar's face value exceeded its intrinsic worth by nearly 10%.
In November 1877, nearly four months before passage of the Bland-Allison Act, the Treasury
saw the handwriting on the wall and began making preparations for a new dollar coin.
Mint
Director Henry P. Linderman ordered Chief Engraver William Barber and one of his
assistants, George T. Morgan, to prepare pattern dollars, with the best design to be used
on the new coin.
Actually, Linderman fixed this "contest" in Morgan's favor; he
had been dissatisfied with the work of the two Barbers William and his son, Charles, and
in 1876 had hired Morgan, a talented British engraver, with plans to entrust him with new
coin designs. At that time, resumption of silver dollar coinage was not yet planned, and
Morgan began work on designs intended for the half dollar. Following Linderman's orders
that a head of Liberty should replace the full-figure depiction then in use, Morgan
recruited Philadelphia school teacher Anna Willess Williams to pose for the new design.
Morgan's obverse features a left-facing portrait of Miss Liberty. The reverse depicts a
somewhat scrawny eagle which led some to vilify the coin as a "buzzard dollar."
The designer's initial M appears on both sides a first. It's on the truncation of
Liberty's neck and on the ribbon's left loop on the reverse. Mintmarks (O, S, D, and CC)
are found below the wreath on the reverse.
Points to check for wear on Morgans are the
hair above Liberty's eye and ear, the high upper fold of her cap and the crest of the
eagle's breast.
Soon after production began, someone advised the Mint that the eagle should have seven
tail feathers, instead of the eight being shown, and Linderman ordered this change. As a
result, some 1878 Morgan dollars have eight feathers, some seven and some show seven over
eight. The seven-over-eight variety is the scarcest, though all are fairly common.
More than half a billion Morgan dollars were struck from 1878 through 1904, with
production taking place at the main mint in Philadelphia and the branches in
New Orleans,
San Francisco and Carson City.
Carson City production was generally much lower and ended
altogether after that branch was closed in 1893. The coin came back for one final curtain
call in 1921, when more than 86 million examples were produced under the terms of the
Pittman Act at Philadelphia, San Francisco and Denver but that was a double-edged sword:
Under the 1918 legislation, more than 270 million older silver dollars, almost all
Morgans, had been melted. The law required replacements for these, but most were of the
Peace design, which replaced the Morgan version at the end of 1921.
In all, some 657 million Morgan dollars were produced in 96 different date-and-mint
combinations. Hundreds of millions were melted over the years by the government under the
Pittman Act and the Silver Act of 1942, and by private refiners since the late 1960s, when
rising silver prices made this profitable.
Despite all the melting, Americans had more
than enough Morgans to fill their daily needs, since the dollars circulated regularly only
in the West. As a result, huge stockpiles remained in the Treasury's vaults, as well as
bank vaults nationwide. This explains why so many Morgan dollars are so well preserved
today despite their age; few saw actual use.
Even as the numismatic hobby underwent rapid growth beginning in the 1930s, interest in
other collecting areas far outpaced the attention paid to the large Morgan cartwheels.
Most collectors preferred the lower face-value coins (with their lower cost) that were
readily available in circulation. Although it was possible to order silver dollars through
banks or directly from the Treasury, few noticed or cared.
In the late 1930s, however,
several Washington dealers learned that the Treasury Department's Cash Room near the White
House was paying out Uncirculated Carson City dollars coins having a market value of $5 or
more at the time! More than a few dealers quietly exploited this discovery throughout the
1940s and `50s.
In the early 1960s, with silver rising in price, opportunists recognized the chance to
turn fast profits by redeeming silver certificates for dollar coins (mostly Morgans) at the
Treasury. By the time the government closed this lucrative window in 1964, only 2.9
million cartwheels were left in its vaults, almost all of them scarce Carson City
Morgans.
These were dispersed by the General Services Administration in a series of mail-bid sales
from 1972 through 1980, earning big profits for the government and triggering great new
interest in silver dollars.
Interest in Morgans was further heightened by the publicity surrounding the 400,000+
dollars found in the basement of Nevada eccentric LaVere Redfield's home. After word
leaked out of the amazing cache, several dealers got into the act, each jockeying for
position in a scramble that ultimately ended with a Probate Court auction held in January
of 1976.
At that sale, A-Mark Coins of Los Angeles captured the hoard with a winning bid
of $7.3 million. The coins were cooperatively marketed by a number of dealers over a
period of several years. Rather than depressing prices, the orderly dispersal of these
coins only served to bring more collectors into the Morgan dollar fold. Similarly, the
early 1980s witnessed the equally successful distribution of the 1.5 million silver
dollars in the Continental Bank hoard.
The Morgan dollar's story is a Cinderella tale: Until the 1960s, it was largely ignored by
the public. Since then, it has gradually become among the most widely pursued and desired
of all U. S. coins. Although many collectors find the challenge of assembling a complete
date and mintmark set in Mint State compelling, others satisfy themselves with collecting
just one coin per year. Exceptional specimens are also sought after by type collectors.
Major keys include 1895, 1893-S, 1895-O, 1892-S, 1889-CC, 1884-S and 1879-CC. Mint records
show that 12,000 business-strike dollars were made in Philadelphia in 1895, but only
proofs are known; the mintage of these is 880. Proofs were made for every year in the
series, but only a few brilliant proofs variously reported at 15 to 24 are known for 1921.
Prooflike Morgans also are highly prized and are collected in both Prooflike (PL) and
Deep-Mirror Prooflike (DPL or DMPL).
Few coins in U.S. history have been greeted with more indifference at the time of their
release than this silver dollar. And few, if any, have then gone on to stimulate such
passionate excitement among collectors.
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