1859-S Seated Liberty Dollar - One of America's First Trade Dollars

Omegaraptor · April 5, 2023 12:10PM

The early coinage of the San Francisco Mint has always intrigued me as a collector, and for good reason. Many historic, rare, and often overlooked issues exist in the first twenty years of the San Francisco Mint's output.

In 1853, the weights of the silver half dime, dime, quarter, and half dollar were reduced as the coins now contained more silver than their face values indicated. The dollar remained untouched, as the gold dollar had become the main dollar coin used in commerce. The Mint continued to strike silver dollars, but they rarely saw any circulation in the United States, generally being exported for international trade.

US trade with China typically started at San Francisco, which was not coining dollars at the time. The vast majority of the silver coins leaving San Francisco for Chinese trade were Mexican dollars. After quite a bit of disagreement between the Philadelphia mint and the San Francisco mint, Philadelphia prepared dies bearing the date 1859 to be sent to San Francisco to coin silver dollars for the export trade. Out of the ten obverse dies and ten reverse dies the San Francisco Mint received, only two were utilized to strike just 20,000 coins. Unfortunately, the issue was not successful, as Chinese traders still preferred the heavier Mexican dollars. Most of the mintage was melted in China, however, a few coins did make their way back to North America over the years. Per seateddollarvarieties.com, about 800 pieces are known to survive today.

Here is my example, which was most likely carried as a pocket piece. It is very rare to see an 1859-S dollar this worn - they are generally seen in mid-grades, although they are also rare in UNC.

Believe it or not, there are still good deals to be found on Ebay. This piece was erroneously listed as a half dollar and put up for auction. Because the coin is so heavily worn, it likely got overlooked by most collectors and viewers. There was only one other bidder at the end of the auction, and they were very conservative. I got this coin for less than $40.