Ever see an original $500 bag of Morgan dollars?
CaptHenway
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Been working with Roger B. trying to figure out what size coin bags the Mint would have used to bag up the 1922-D cents I am writing up. Now looks like that in the 1920's they made up $20 bags of cents for sale directly to banks, and $50 bags for shipment to Federal Reserve Banks that would then make up 50 coin rolls for sale to banks. Nickels were shipped to Fed Banks in $100 bags.
These same numbers applied to used coins which had flowed back to the Mint after the World War One coin boom, and which the Treasury was trying to get back into circulation. The 1922-D cents, and other new coins for a few years, were embargoed from shipping to force the banks to take the older coins.
Anyways, in his vast research he uncovered this 1884 letter which ordered the Acting Coiner to bag up Morgan dollars in $500 bags. Subsequent correspondence reveals that the experiment failed because the Cashier found it more difficult to stack $500 bags than $1000 bags. Who knew?
TD
Comments
Explains what happened to the 1899-O "error" Dollar!
The current FUN auction at Heritage has a bunch of original Mint bags for sale for double eagles.
https://coins.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?Ne=304&N=3183+793+794+791+1577+792+2088+4294946859+342&ic4=Refine-CoinCategory-102615
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
Did they state WHY it was harder to stack $500 bags? Did they not lay as flat?
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
Don't know, but think about how a brick wall gains strength by overlapping the bricks. I would assume that the shorter bags would not overlap.
I can answer that. I stocked multiple bags of 90% in the shop and half or quarter bags tended to collapse the pile.
$1000 bags form a larger base.
I would like to have a $1000 bag of Morgans ....would be fun to search and certainly a good conversation item...I am sure most people today - who do not generally see silver dollars (heck not even silver half dollars), would be amazed. Cheers, RickO
Two years ago (decided to sell them on Ebay) I discovered that my wife threw out all my US Mint canvas bags that I had collected over the decades that some ants had gotten into! This included four used for Carson City dollars.
It's very curious to me because she'll put two towels at a time in the washer. One of the pitfalls/mysteries of marriage I guess.
They were probably all baggy.
Back at you Captain! And, in answer to you post in the other thread, I would assume that the fish was owed!
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You would have loved Charles E. "Shotgun" Slade, a flamboyant Orlando dealer in the early 1960's. His full page ads every week in the new publication Coin World would have the price of a bag of silver dollars in large bold type (changed almost weekly to reflect the market but mainly to draw more looks). IIRC he ran into some legal problems (I do not remember the circumstances) a bit later in the decade but until then he was not exactly the shy wallflower type of businessman.
They would make good doorstops!