ATS thread on 1895 Morgan Dollars

[DaveG]

For those of you who haven's seen it, there's a thread ATS about the 1895 Morgan dollar, with some nice imaged. Link

 

I posted about RWB's article on the 1895 Morgans that was published in Coin Values a number of years ago.

 

Unfortunately, the copy of the article I have isn't dated.

 

Roger - do you remember when the article was published?

[RWB]

DaveG -

The article is copyrighted 2006 so it likely appeared in Coin World in 2006 or 2007. Reprints should be available from CW or possibly from their on-line archive.

 

The comment in the PCGS post, "The prevailing theory is that the coins were never minted in the first place..." is not correct. Multiple records show that 12,000 1895 pieces were minted near the end of June 1895. Further, special assay and annual assay coins were selected from this production and examined per law and regulations

 

[DaveG]

Roger,

 

Thanks!

 

I thought your article solved the "mystery" pretty conclusively, but I guess a lot of people never saw it.

 

By the way, you rather glossed over this part, but I infer from the article that you believe that the circulation-strike coins were struck with the proof dies, since no circulation-strike dies were delivered in 1895?

[RWB]

I found nothing definitive stating that additional dies were made for the 12,000 circulation pieces -- but nothing to the contrary, either. It should not have consumed 4 or 5 pairs of dies to make 880 good proofs. Barber’s documents are clear that he was reporting proof (polished) dies. (More than 880 proofs were undoubtedly struck, but some were defective and consequently destroyed. For silver dollars the typical defect rate was about 30%, but I don’t have exact numbers for 1895.)

 

The fate of those circulation pieces will be published in good time.

[DaveG]

Well, as you know, the Mint Annual Report for the year ending June 30, 1895 only lists 4 silver dollar dies manufactured for the Philadelphia mint.

 

It looks like the 111,000 1894-dated circulation-strike silver dollars and the 12,000 1895-dated circulation-strike dollars were all minted in fiscal 1895.

 

Interestingly, Bowers, in his Silver Dollar Encyclopedia, says 7 obverse and 5 reverse dies were prepared for 1894 circulation coinage, although only one die pair may have been used. He says 2 obverse and at least 1 reverse proof dies.

 

For 1895, he says 5 obverse and 4 reverse dies for circulation coinage and 4 obverse and 1 or more reverse dies for proof coinage. He says all four proof obverses were used.

 

It's interesting that Bowers' information apparently conflicts with the Mint annual report (although a die manufactured for another mint might have ended up being used in Philadelphia, I suppose).

[RWB]

I'm not sure that Mint Annual Reports should be considered definitive. Where internal documents exist, they tend to be much more detailed and reliable that the annual reports.

 

I realize you know this, but some readers might not: Obverse dies were calendar year-specific, and destroyed in January of the next year. Reverse dies were generic, with mintmarks added before shipment to the other mints. Unused reverse dies were carried forward whenever possible.

 

Since the fiscal year and calendar year were usually 6 months out of sync, all fiscal years (as discussed in the Annual Report) spanned half of two calendar years. This makes for confusion when trying to allocate fiscal year production across calendar years.

 

Thus, unused reverse dies made in 1895, 1894 (or 1893) could have been used to make 1895 circulation dollars; but, only obverse dies dated 1895 could have been available in June 1895. Ergo, it was possible to strike 1895 circulation dollars from a used 1895 proof obverse and some unknown reverse.

[DaveG]

Thanks for the clarification.

 

I'm not surprised, but it is annoying when the Mint Annual Reports don't agree with the underlying internal documents.

 

(Don't even get me started on how the names of the mint officers are spelled - between the Senate Executive publications, the Mint reports and the Official Register, sometimes it's a wonder if they agree!)

[leeg]

Good stuff Dave and Roger. Thanks for making me a little smarter.

 

(thumbs u