Hey, Westerners-- how many of you remember getting silver dollars in change back in the 1940's to 19

shirohniichan

I have read that silver dollars mostly circulated in the western states.

Do any of you "old timers" remember how often (if at all) you got Morgan and Peace dollars in change in the 1940's to 1960's?

sliderider

I know a lot of silver dollars accumulated in Las Vegas for use in the slot machines. Casino owners used to blast the finish off the coins because collectors would buy rolls at the cashier for cherrypicking and then leave without using them in the casino. Beware of any auction or sale of silver dollars that says 'old casino hoard' or 'old Nevada bank hoard' or something similar.

sumnom

My mother was out west during the war (1944-45) and she has told me on a number of occasions that people there actually preferred silver dollars to paper. It wasn't just a matter of getting them in change, they were the preferred medium of exchange. She went back east with a bunch of silver dollars and amazed her friends with them. I don't know where they are now.... She never said if they were Morgans or Peace or both.

coynclecter

Mostly they were used in Vegas. Elsewhere they were as loved as the Susan B is today. But in 1960 when they started dumping bags at the bank, then everyone brought a few home.

Some may not know it but in the dump of the early sixties there were also a few bags of 1859-O and 1860-O, in unc. Heavy bagmarks but hey; I wouldn't complain if I got a bag.

sumnom

Well, according Ol' Mom, they were used for everyday transactions in Salt Lake in '44-'45.

sliderider

Let's not forget that back in the 40s, we were still on the silver standard and the western states were still a little more rugged and the people felt a little more removed from the government all the way in D.C. A lot of the old timers then still remembered the days of bank runs in the late 19th century and there not being enough money, either paper or metallic, in circulation to go around. If my old grand-dad had brought me up on stories of the hard times in the old days, I'd hoard every damn silver coin that came my way and only use paper money when I had no other choice.

INXS

I know my grandparents had quite a few, my graqndmother would sew a pocket in her bra and in my grandfathers underwear and they would keep a silver dollar on them at all times, this was a carry over from the depression.

Gemini

A woman returning from Vegas with a load of Silver Dollars in her purse entered our family business and wanted to know if we would take some of them off her hands. The tooled leather pocketbook which she had purchased while stopping in Mexico on vacation was nearly full of dollars. We did her a favor and took a hundred of them at face face back then as Silver Dollars were still worth only a dollar and were not valued at that time. Back then Silver Dollars were considered more of a nuisance than a rarity. Many merchants would take them back to the Bank when they accumulated them. My Mother kept them just for fun and thought maybe someday they will be worth more than face value. None of them were defaced by the Casinos with the dates ground off as was the case later on. They are mostly nice and in average condition and nothing rare is amongst them. Mom has since passsed on and left them to me and I still have them.

majorbigtime

I remember them occasionally circulating in Southern California during the 50s & 60s. I suspect these often came from folks returning from Nevada. Some old National cash registers even has a place for them in the coin drawer!

My father (RIP) ran a dry cleaners and sometimes would get silver ddollars in change. He would give them to me at the end of the day. I was baaaaaaaad, and sometimes would later put 'em back into the register for dollar bills, so Dad would give 'em to me again!

fishcooker

My Dad says the silver dollars were not liked..... you could just go to the bank and get all you want as no one cared. Halves were OK, back then 50 cents bought something worthwhile.

Heck just look at the fact that dollars have decades where none are minted, and you see how popular they were.

OKbustchaser

Growing up in Oklahoma I used to see them quite often at the gas station where I worked. Up into the late 60's and occasionally even the very early 70's.
Jim

clw54

They circulated in the Lake Tahoe area in the early sixties. My parents and grandparents had some. Not a Carson City in the bunch, unfortunately.

AuldFartte

Morgans circulated here in NM in the '50's when I was a little kid. My Dad and his poker buddies used 'em in thier card games instead of chips. They were just "dollars" to us back then. Nothing special.

cladking

I watched my parents change all through the late '50's in northern Indiana and never
saw a silver dollar. There were commemorative half dollars and a very occasional indian
cent or even cull Barber but no dollar coins. Of course, in 1960 during the treasury releases
they started getting a few dollar coins. These were available on request at many banks but
few requested them and they were not spent.

DorkGirl

In the 50's my dad and grandpa used to get them occasionally for payment in their gas station. In the late 60's and 70's, he would sometimes get rolls of silver quarters. He used to keep them around for a couple of weeks to see if somebody's parents would come looking for them. Nobody ever did though. I can also remember going through the change every night after closing, checking for silver.

Coulport

As a youth I remember well getting silver dollars in change. My fondest rememberance is going to the store for my mother for a loaf of bread and a half gallon of milk with a $5 bill in hand. The clerk gave me back 4 silver dollars and change. (Does that tell you how low prices were then) My mother yelled at me to not take any more silver dollars as they broke the strap on her purse cause they were so heavy.
Silver dollars were pretty much gone by the middle 60s but once in a while you could ask at the small shops if they had any and they would gladly trade you.

Now Montana was silver dollar country for sure. On fishing trips there with my father, all you saw in the shops was silver.

uncleb

My father worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers and traveled extensively through western North Dakota and eastern Montana during about 1958-1970. He learned quickly that using paper ones (and any paper, really) branded one immediately as an outsider, as if his Hoosier accent wasn't enough.

He spend a lot of his nights in a hotel room searching for "tough" date silver dollars. Of course, this was before the GSA era and there were many more good dates in the series.

Another discovery was that the stocks of paper currency at the banks were stale. A number of National Currency pieces were obtained simply by talking to the tellers at the very small banks. I seems the bankers didn't care to do the Feds bidding and held on to all sorts of things they were supposed to send back to the government for destruction. At one point, he go to know a banker who had a large portion of his cash reserves in $500 and $1000 bills. Dad ended up brokering them to a number of dealers around the country.

A similar situation existed at the very small, isolated post offices, who still had some of the high-denomination stamps from series as early as the late teens.

DesertRat

Although I was only 4 years old when the Treasury release ended, I remember my Mom had a large ceramic piggy bank that was full of Morgan and Peace dollars she received as tips while working as a hostess popular upscale restaraunt. I also remember taking weekend trips to Vegas in the late 60's early 70's and both my parents giving us silver dollars as souveneirs(sp?). Unfortunately the coin bug did not have me in its grips then and we spent them since they were fairly common. Later on my older brother slowly pilfered my Mom's piggy bank of her dollars and used them on candy and sodas, movies etc.. She is still ticked about that to this day

DDR

My father told me that he made a trip out west in the early 1960's. At the time he was living in the midwest. He received a number of silver dollars in change and saved 12 of them because he thought it unusual. We sold his little hoard about 20 years ago but beforehand I closely checked them for rarities. There of course weren't any. All were common dates, all circulated. I'd say they were about 2/3 Morgans and 1/3 Peace. I remember there being several '21 Morgans in the group.

shirohniichan

The reason I asked when silver dollars circulated is because I'm trying to narrow down when my pastor's parents and grandparents likely took their hoard in as payment at the retail stores they owned. I've read through Bowers' Buyers' Guide to Silver Dollars and Trade Dollars, and I see that some probably came in after some Treasury releases in 1958. It amazes me to think they circulated through the late 1960's in California.

sliderider

Probably old family hoards. Like I said, grandma and grandpa probably had mason jars of silver they hoarded from the various economic recessions they lived through and their families inherited the coins and since silver still circulated at that time and didn't have the same collector value that it has today, they spent them (probably reluctantly).