Morgans vs. Seated Dollars Availability
numismapiddler
Posts: 79 ✭✭
I have noticed over the years that availability of Morgan dollars compared with Seated Liberty seems to be skewed based on production. If I have calculated correctly, there were roughly 100 Morgans minted for every Seated Dollar. Yet, the availability at a given coin show seems to run more like 400 to 1 or even higher. This is not scientific, just a general observation.
Pittman Act melted mostly Seated? Collectors hold Seated and flip Morgans? I doubt any Seated Dollars have been melted in the last 75 years, so it just seems they are less common than they should be. What are your thoughts?
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I think the Seateds actually circulated where the Morgan’s went into bags.
Morgan’s are known for being shiny and bright and are easily attainable in MS. If it’s 400-1 total availability at shows, it’s probably 4000-1 or worse for MS availability (someone can research and tell for real, but you get the point).
Morgan’s are collected/owned by almost everyone, Seateds are viewed more as a type coin. More buyers, more sellers...those are my late night thoughts on this
I’ve been looking for a NICE seated liberty dollar for my 1879 showcase set and the best I can find is a 64! Whose hoarding the high end seated dollars? They DO exist as evidenced by the Hansen set and others. Yes I’ve seen the two at US coins (65’s) but I need a 66 to match my set. Seriously, TWO years?
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/collectors-showcase/date-sets/hashtags-prefect-coin-grading-service-1879/album/7621
I like all US silver dollars, but I LOVE Liberty Seated Dollars.
Seriously PCGS MS-66 examples are very scarce. The current population report says there are 20 graded MS-66 and 10 graded MS-66+. You can subtract 7 from the MS-66's and 3 MS-66+'s since they are in the D.L. Hanson collections. That leaves 13 MS-66's and 7 MS-66+'s.
In addition, it's likely that the PCGS population is inflated due to resubmissions.
Most of these coins are in strong hands, patience is required, good luck.
Gonna be looking a lot longer than that for an MS66 1879 seated dollar.
I'll say it's a draw!
Based on the PCGS pop report they have certified a total of 3.5 Million Morgan Dollars and just under 18,000 Seated Dollars. So there are 200 times more certified Morgans that Seated.
I bought an 1842 raw as AU Details. Sent it in to PCGS and it came back authenticity unverifiable. These are hard enough to get into plastic let alone find a problem-free attractive example. I have been looking for a nice AU58 for years.
Seated Dollars were made to be used. Morgan’s were made to satisfy the silver lobby. Seated Dollars suffered attrition while Morgan’s sat in bags.
Why not be DIRECT? There ARE no 1879 Seated Dollars
This is where you say, "I meant Trade Dollar." Nice set, by the way.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
In which case HashTag would be looking for a PR 66
Many Seated Dollars, including the ones with high mintages, were minted for export to China where they were subsequently melted. Plus the silver dollar wasn't popular, especially in the west, where it was all about gold. When a dollar was meant to be spent and circulate, people preferred the gold dollar over a silver dollar. BTW, good observations and question by the OP!
I got to see TD’s great collection of Seated dollars at the ANA in Anaheim....since sold
In September of 1873, the SF Mint Superintendent when answering a question about silver bullion being exported to China, stated that considerable amounts of American (silver) Dollars had gone forward too. In the next paragraph he stated that the Trade Dollar was now coming in great demand with a fair prospect of competing with the Mexican coin..
Some Seated dollars were melted at home too...At the NNP site I saw a receipt for $49,478 Silver One Dollar pieces sent for Re-Coinage from the Assistant Treasurer at New Orleans to the P Mint dated September 7th
1876. No dates or mintmark’s were given.
Indeed, but go look at the set if you haven't.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Ditto to what has been said above. Seated dollars are far, far tougher to find nice - circulated or uncirculated. So many have been cleaned up and made lifeless.
That being said, I'm getting a nice XF 1843 dollar - with a hole. I plan to make another coin necklace out of it.
10-4,
My Instagram picturesErik
My registry sets
When I've been at Long Beach Shows over the years, it seems that there are thousands of Unc. Morgans being offered on any given day. If you want a with motto Seated Dollar, your best bet is finding an 1871. If you want a no motto Seated Dollar in Unc., look for a 59 O or 60 O without too many bagmarks (good luck with that as well). If you want one in MS 65, you'll have to look for awhile. I haven't checked pricing on them, but it's in the five figures, more for the scarcer dates.
"Seu cabra da peste,
"Sou Mangueira......."
Some 1859-O and 60-O dollars were actually part of the Treasury release in 1962. They are probably the most "common" uncirculated seated dollars.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Originals graded 35 (depending on the date) and higher are worth buying at the right price... However I rarely see Seated Dollars worth buying.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Seated dollars were also affected by the bimetallic crisis in the early 1850's. As the supply of gold rapidly increased from the gold rush in California, the price of silver rose to the point it became profitable to melt US silver coins. The Type I silver Three Cent was Congress's initial half measure to fill in the gap that developed between the cent and gold dollar in circulation. It took them until 1853 to enact the obvious solution of reducing the weights of our silver coins (though the dollar was exempted, leaving it undervalued at face).
The Civil War made the relative values of gold and silver moot, as coins of both metals disappeared from circulation. By the 1870's, increasing silver production, and wider adoption of the gold standard, caused the price of silver to fall, a trend that would continue into the 20th Century. This happened too late to save the Seated Dollar, though. The Morgan was produced in far greater numbers than were actually needed for commerce, and was not profitable to melt in its time, although unusual events such as the 1918 Pittman Act, and the Manhattan Project, claimed a portion of the government's ample stock. The two series' history contributes to the greater difference in availability than their mintages might suggest.
I learned a long time ago on other boards “ don’t feed the trolls”. We ALL misspeak/ misspell. As for the adult replies, thanks even though the info was depressing.
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/collectors-showcase/date-sets/hashtags-prefect-coin-grading-service-1879/album/7621
I’m not sure who you think was trolling, nor am I certain exactly what coin you are looking for to place in your set - but I can emphatically state (as one who has collected both) that there’s a world of difference in availability between an MS66 seated dollar and a PR66 trade dollar.
Yes, some hairlines.
https://caimages.collectors.com/coinimages/42396/35024334/lf[3]1.jpg
My collecting “Pride & Joy” is my PCGS Registry Dansco 7070 Set:
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/type-sets/design-type-sets/complete-dansco-7070-modified-type-set-1796-date/publishedset/213996
At shows there’s also a cost/customer base issue. There’s way more people roaming the bourse floor with 1 or 2 hundred bucks for a really nice looking Morgan than there are with $500 for one of the cheapest XF Seateds. If you’ve got a booth full of seated dollars, that’s awesome, but if you’re trying to move product, you’ve got to have more M
Besides original mintages you have to apply survival rates. The surviving #'s or original bags (most since broken) up skew the numbers. Generally I have found the survival rates for most seated coins to be in the 0.5 to 1% range. For Morgans it would have normally been around 5-20% if no bank hoards ever existed. The Pittman meltings took a big toll on the Morgans....but, still left the majority intact.
Figuring 18,000 business strike seated dollars at PCGS and a similar amount at NGC, suggests 35,000 slabbed out of the total seated dollar mintage of approx 6.5 MILLION.....a 0.5% survival rate. I'm going to assume that the regrades of these over 30 yrs (an average of a regrade per coin) will about balance the raw coins that have never gone to the TPGs.
With around 3000 MS 1859-0/60-0 dollars between PCGS and NGC and probably half of these are duplicates today, that number really doesn't skew the 35,000 total population all that much....around 4%. I'll just assume it's no factor.
With hundreds of millions of Morgans (per QDB) surviving from bank vaults and hoards, that's a ratio of 275 MILL / 35K = 7857. 1 seated dollar for about every 8000 Morgans. Even if we doubled their survival rate to 1%, that would mean 4000 Morgans to each seated dollar.
Total mintage was near 657 million. About half of all the Morgan Dollars have been melted down as silver bullion since 1918. Even with that taken into account, there are still approximately 275 million such coins in existence, so in terms of supply, there definitely isn't a shortage.
https://seatedlibertydollar.com/seated-liberty-dollar-mintage/
Seated dollars in PQ Form are next to impossible to find these days. MS Seated Dollars seem to have disappeared with any frequency or regularity from auctions in the last several years. Must be some big collections building.
Start with the "coinage act of 1873" and work your way through, the silver lobby, mining er over mining get a Bowers book on the subject ....Silver Dollars and trade dollars of the United States. This is fun reading, a little dry here and there, but the books should still be available.
A very good post by ShaunBC5
Or a number of collectors and dealers just putting away EVERY problem-free seated dollar they've been running across for the past 10-30 yrs. My very first seated dollar was back in 1975....a perfect fully original XF+ 1867 for $135....out of a Coin World ad. I had done some research and figured out a number of the P mints from 1853 to 1868 were quite "worth" in circulated grades. Mintages were quite low on many of them. The goal was to find nice circs of 1854 and 1855....never did.
Maybe the thought is they both have seated liberty figures?
There were a few nice ones in the Pogue sale
Those two(one no motto 1863 and one motto 1866) were both stunning! DL Hanson got the 1863, but unsure who ended up the 1866. To find such large coins without damage or having been messed with over that many years reflect true treasures.
Quality 1854's and 1855's are really difficult to find, as you already know/found out. For that matter the whole 1850's decade is extremely difficult.
I agree that many have been hidden away in strong hands given rarity and strong demand. Personally, I especially like seated dollars with original colorful toning. They are a rare find indeed.
Would be nice to see another collection outside of Morelan/Hanson collection come up for sale sometime.
I presently own three examples of the SL dollar, an EF 1842, a heavily circulated 1859-O and a proof 1860. Crazily enough the favourite is the 1859-O, it looks like the war got the better of it - but it is a historical piece with a connection to New Orleans in the antebellum era. I don't have much interest in the series, but a lot more interest in what I have than the whole Morgan series from 1878-1921.
Here they are. The realized prices are interesting. The 63 sold for less than the high estimate while the 66 sold for 47% more.
1863 Liberty Seated Dollar - No Motto - PCGS MS67 POP 1/0 - Pogue-Hansen Specimen
1866 Liberty Seated Dollar, Repunched Date, DDR - PCGS MS66+ POP 1/2 CAC - Pogue Specimen
Very tough to find the better dates; once sold a nice original 1843 to HA's buyer at Baltimore in XF45 who clearly wanted to buy it as it was a nice coin. Also had some Unc. pieces that Gary Adkins told me collectors liked as flashy Unc.s and not toned which one I had was. AUs are readily available in the common dates.
Sometimes I wonder if the general public were relieved by a new era of coinage as was inaugurated in 1878, and then in 1891, "out with the old and in with the new", Morgan designs and later the Barbers,etc., with less being saved as a result.
There aren't very many LSDs compared to Morgans but there still seem to be quite a bit on eBay, at least for type collectors. However, nice condition coins seem rare.
From my understanding, people were not crazy about the Morgan Dollar and called it the "Buzzard Dollar" when it was introduced. They probably thought of it as ModernCrap™
Seated designs are more aesthetic in a lot of ways, more graceful according to classical standards. Morgans have their own charm and seem to me a more serious workhorse of commerce during the gilded age.
Very good point Zoins about the auction price difference versus estimates on the two coins. Ironically, the 1863 is more scare and difficult to find in high grades than the 1866.
Frankly, I would take either as both are stunningly beautiful! Finding a MS67 in no motto is amazing.
When I started my 7070 album, I knew from the start that the two Seated Liberty dollars would be the hardest holes to fill. Hopefully I’ll find nice heavily circulated examples, but even those seem to be in short supply.
Surprised that there are no really high grade seated dollars in many of multi-million dollar collections that have or are coming on the market soon.
Morgan have lower attrition levels. They were never really used. Seated dollars were used and collected and whittled down. Really that simple
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
The 1859-S Seated Dollar was minted almost exclusively for that purpose, and might be considered the first de facto international trade coin minted by the US as a result. However, despite the likely thousands that were likely sent, no more than a small handful have been found with chopmarks indicating survival; I've seen three or four examples that that are likely genuine, and only a couple of other dates (an 1843-P from the Rose collection, and an 1872-S shared previously on the Boards). The survival rates among examples of the type sent to China were very small, the vast majority likely ended up as bullion.
Some specific pop numbers have been mentioned but I wonder how they compare overall.
One thought is to compare the survivorship to collector ratio.
I’ve been looking for a NICE seated liberty dollar for my 1879 showcase set and the best I can find is a 64! Whose hoarding the high end seated dollars? They DO exist as evidenced by the Hansen set and others. Yes I’ve seen the two at US coins (65’s) but I need a 66 to match my set. Seriously, TWO years?
I have looked for an any grade UNC 10 centavo coin for my U.S. philippine collection for ** 20 YEARS !!!**
from 1975 to 1995, found one on a list for $100! Would have paid over a $1000. for it back then.
And I am always aggressively looking every day and at most large shows!!
good luck
Krueger
10 top #1 or #2 registry sets.
Not to derail the thread more than a little bit... what year are you looking for in a 10c US-PHIL?
TurtleCat Gold Dollars
Seated's were almost all melted in China.
an UNC 1903-S Phil-Am 10 centavo.
A very key date in the whole series
Nice low grade Uncs now about Two grand.
maybe saw three uncs 61 and 64 last year. Banner year for them.
compare pops numbers to 1916-D dime
I didn't realize so many were sent over, but it would make some sense that the ones that did were melted as they did not have the same silver content as other coins being circulated, hence the creation of the Trade Dollar.
They cost (after like 1850 or so) $1.03 to mint, so they were all sold through exchange brokers (kinda like pre-1834 gold) and were mainly send to Asia/Europe, from China they were sent to India as part of the Opium Triangle, (where they were melted). Or in Europe to be made into their coins.