Have article on 1873-S Seated Dollars in July issue of The Numismatist
CaptHenway
Posts: 34,202 ✭✭✭✭✭
Please pardon the shameless self-promoting, but Dan Owens and I have an article on the 1873-S Seated Liberty Dollars in the July issue of The Numismatist that just went up online. The gist of the article is that the 700 1873-S Seated Dollars officially recorded as having been struck, but only unofficially presumed to have been melted, can more logically be presumed to have been 1872-S Dollars that were quietly issued in February of 1873.
Dan dug into the San Francisco Mint records and found that in late 1872 and early 1873 various quantities of silver were deposited by various companies and individuals that were specifically tagged at the time of the deposits for settlement in Standard Silver Dollars. The Mint even charged a special fee for payment in silver dollars, and reported this fee in their books in a specific account. The amount of silver so deposited would have generated a little over 9,800 coins, less melting, refining and coining wastages and losses.
The Mint issued 9,000 dollars in late 1872, and reported 700 dollars coined in 1873. None of the depositors of the silver earmarked for coinage into 9,800 or so dollars show any indication that they received half dollars or any other fractional coin instead of dollars. None of them show that the special fee they paid was refunded.
Mathematically this means that the 700 dollar coins were delivered to depositors, fulfilling all dollar obligations other than the wastages and roundings. The records show that the 1873 deliveries were dispersed to several small depositors, in precise quantities such as 87 or 117. This dispersal greatly minimizes the chance that all of the 700 coins were later somehow rounded up and exported or melted.
If those 700 coins were issued as part of the recorded 1873 deliveries, and they had been dated 1873-S, then a few of them should have survived to modern times. It is our contention that they were not dated 1873-S, and that the Redbook should be changed to eliminate the line listing for them, just as other phantom entries in the Mint's records (such as 1858-S Quarter Eagles) have been deleted from modern numismatic literature.
Please read the article and decide for yourself. Comments here are welcome.
TD
Comments
Curious what you think of the reports or rumor that an 1873-S was shown to someone(can't remember the details) back in the 70's????
Just a rumor.
I just read it a couple of hours ago.
Just be sure the roomers pay their rent in advance....
Looking forward to the article!
If the listing is eliminated, doesn't the 1872-S $1 mintage also have to go up to 9,700?
An excellent suggestion.
Very interesting... Thanks for the research.... Cheers, RickO
Read it last night. Nice article
Thanks!
Nice sleuthing. Maybe depositor records at the San Francisco Mint will be able to provide some clues as to the name(s) of the depositors who buried their minted gold in what became known as the Saddle Ridge Hoard.
My only thought, (of limited use):
It would seem to me that IF "official" mintages are modified in a reference book based on best available research, the "official" numbers, and how the new documented number was arrived at, should probably be documented in the text, or footnote, or something. You can't assume that 50 years from now, a fresh and motivated young researcher won't "discover" the official mintage, and undo your good work because they just don't know any better....
Unfortunately, that probably makes for a longer and hard to manage book, filled with "trivial" footnotes. (You know...like Breen's opus).
First article I read when I opened the issue online yesterday. Well done!
Pacific Northwest Numismatic Association
This is one reason why I wanted the article published in "The Numismatist," as it is the publication of record that hopefully will survive into the future. I wrote a lot of good stuff for COINage Magazine, and where is it now? Likewise Bob Julian's writings in COINage, Coins and other publications.
Some of this stuff will be saved in the Newman Numismatic Portal, but I personally find it very difficult to use.