So, I had some time on my hands today. Morgan Dollar Mint/Melt figures.....

guitarwes

Yeah, this took a few minutes to add up. Information taken from the '05 Redbook.


There were 558,272,001 Morgan Dollars minted from 1878 to 1904 (excluding Proof issues).

There were 270,232,722 Morgan Dollars melted in 1918 due to the Pittman Act.

This brings the total number of surviving Morgan Dollars to 288,039,279 (about 51.59479223% of the total mintage) Just think of all the goods one's gone.
Theoretically, higher initial mintages may be rarer and more more valuable than small initial mintages. (but, I'm sure you've already thought about that before) I can hear those 1887's going up now.

The Gov't melted 431,789,896 Oz. pure of silver bullion just in Morgan Dollars (poor Morgans). At today's 12.50/oz., that's $5,397,373,705.66.

There was a mintage of 86,730,000 1921 Morgan Dollars and a mintage of 189,658,623 Peace Dollars.
(so all of them junky '21 Vams ya'll collect are just melted up 93-S's)

add the 21 Morgan's and the Peace $'s up and you get a mintage of 276,388,623.
That's 11,650,656 coins melted down that were not used for minting at the time. (this is of no significance whatsoever).

My question, after all this general information, is:
Would a one-legged man really get into a butt kicking contest? I mean, come on, really?












.........Have a good weekend......All the info. is true though. If you don't believe me, add it up.

thecointrader

Interesting to note that the number of surviving Morgans after the Pittman melt is roughly equal to the current population of the United States, so even though common date Morgans are a widget item, there still aren't enough for everyone to own one. (Now...how to get everyone to *want* one, well, that's another story.)

Maybe the one legged man was actually a two legged man until after he lost his *first* kicking contest...

kwmorgan

Even the 270+ survival after the Pittman Act isn't all that accurate anymore. The 1979-80 silver boom caused a massive melt of Morgans, along with other pre-1964 silver coins. I would bet the number is down to 100-150 million by now.

kwmorgan

<< <i>Even the 270+ survival after the Pittman Act isn't all that accurate anymore. The 1979-80 silver boom caused a massive melt of Morgans, along with other pre-1964 silver coins. I would bet the number is down to 100-150 million by now. >>



Sorry, 288+ million I meant.

rec78

How do you know that all the dollars melted down were Morgans? There may have been Seated,Trade and even Bust dollars in the mix.

kwmorgan

I'm sure there may have have been a few other types of dollars, but just due to mintage figures, the majority would have been Morgans. Plus I remember how 1921 Morgans were treated circa 1979, they still had that "nuisance" aura about them. Not so anymore.