MSN: Morgan Silver Dollars That Can Break The Bank

Above, an 1883-O Morgan dollar graded AU. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The Morgan silver dollar is my favorite coin to collect.

This started when I inherited several Morgan dollars that were minted at the Carson City mint. I sold them at a good profit (at the time) on eBay. I now regret doing so as those Carson City Morgan dollars have skyrocketed in value. Ah, well. Live and learn.

Since then, I have bought more Morgans. Those, I am definitely keeping.

MSN.com has posted an article on Morgan silver dollars that are the most valuable to collect. Most are way out of my reach price-wise.

The article begins with: 

Morgan silver dollars were 90 percent silver, one-dollar coins minted between 1878 and 1904, with a special one-off production in 1921 — but their history goes back a bit further.

The Comstock Lode, a massive silver discovery in 1859, flooded the U.S. market with silver and caused the value of silver coins to drop. As a result, in 1873, the Coinage Act stopped the production of silver coins in the United States. Eventually, the silver supply dropped, and the U.S. government passed the Bland-Allison Act to reinstate a silver coin in 1878 and appointed the task to U.S. Mint Director Henry Linderman.

Linderman held a competition for the design of a new silver dollar, which was won by English engraver, George Morgan. Morgan used his fiancee, schoolteacher Anna Williams, as the model for the head of Liberty on one side of the coin. The reverse shows an American eagle holding a clutch of arrows, with the words “United States One Dollar.” The new coins were called Morgan silver dollars after their designer. 

The History of the Production of Morgan Dollars

Before we can talk about the most valuable Morgan silver dollars, we wanted to give you a bit more insight into the production of these coins. They were made in five different U.S. Treasury locations, and each mint had its own special letter designation stamped on the coins. These locations were Carson City (“CC”), New Orleans (“O”), San Francisco (“S”), Denver (“D”) and Philadelphia (no mark).

To read more, go here. 

By the way, silver is back up over $22.00/toz. The current COMEX spot price for silver is $22.275/toz.