Q. David Bowers
George .Washington as a lad is said to have thrown a silver dollar across the Potomac River or, perhaps more accurately, a Spanish-American eight real coin across the Rappahannock. Unfortunately, this was long before the first Philadelphia Mint dollar, dated 1794, saw the light of day. However, there are indeed presidential connections with dollars, including a very nice 1836 Gobrecht which was included in a 1992 auction sale, and which specifically traced its pedigree to 1836, when President Andrew Jackson sent it to his sister. (Catalogue of the James D. Brilliant and William R. Sieck Collections, Bowers and Merena, January 1992.)
While "presidential dollars" may exist, most surviving coins are more egalitarian; they were used by the common man. In the 1790s such coins as dollars of 1794 and 1795 circulated up and down the East Coast, the territory that constituted the limits of the United States at the time. Unfortunately for later historians, newspapers did not. print much in the way of articles on everyday life, and we can only suppose that the cash drawer of a wayside tavern in Vermont, or the leather purse of a ships' chandler on Pearl Street in New York City, jingled with a few silver dollars. One 1795 dollar and another dated 1800 found their way to the proprietor of Houck's Panacea (a patent medicine put up in greenish-hued glass bottles in Baltimore), who stamped his advertisement on them and coins of other denominations. "Prepared solely from vegetable matter," this potion is said to have been good for whatever ailed you.
One 1794 dollar traveled north to the Granite State, where the editor of The New Hampshire Gazette, December 2, 1794, was moved to comment as follows, in part:
"The tout ensemble has a pleasing effect to a connoisseur; but the touches of the graver are too delicate, and there is a want of that boldness of execution which is necessary to durability and currency."
(His comment confused the effects of die misalignment with those of shallow engraving; his final clause suggests that such coins would not long remain legible in circulation, and therefore be suspected of being worn to below acceptable weight.)
During this era it was popular for Englishmen to visit America, Britain's former colony. In autumn 1795, Sir Rowland Winn (later, Major the Lord St. Oswald) is said to have visited Philadelphia and to have obtained coins there, perhaps even going to the Mint itself, but this is not documented. Alternatively, he may have acquired them from an intermediary such as Captain Hawkins Whitshed, who, in 1796, sold United States coins to Sarah Sophia Banks (whose collection was divided in 1818 between the Royal Mint and the British Museum which got her 1794 dollar). (Per an undated (received April 1992) letter from Jack Collins to the author.) What is known is that he added to his cabinet an assortment of United States coins from half cents to silver dollars, in the last category being two Mint State specimens of 1794 and three dated 1795. These augmented his collection, consisting primarily of ancient Greek and Roman and early British issues.
Years later, in 1964, a descendant brought these coins to Christie's auction rooms in London, where the British, ancient Greek, and other coins in the Lord St. Oswald Collection Sale attracted but passing notice, while all eyes were focused upon the two stars of the sale, the pair of 1794s. Among those in attendance were American dealers Lester Merkin, Norman Stack, and James F. Ruddy.
While verified "adventures" of early silver dollars of the 1794-1803 era are few and far between, the existence of so many worn ones today attests to their popularity and use in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Liberty Seated dollars, first minted in 1840, were fairly popular in American commerce up until early in the 1850s, when the price of silver rose to the point at which the coins became worth more in bullion value than face value, and many were melted or exported. The story of Liberty Seated dollars is rather checkered, but immensely interesting. Particularly fascinating to me is that not all of the facts are known today, that contemporary accounts differ, and that there is ample room for more research to be done. The Gobrecht Journal has provided a forum for many opinions over the years, and in reading back issues it is interesting to see how ideas and rarity estimates have changed through time. All researchers benefit from the efforts of others, and appreciation must be given to those who were willing to write the first paper on how rare a particular variety is, or to give its characteristics. Such initial efforts are, in effect, targets to shoot at. However, they must not be treated unfairly in light of later knowledge. I enjoy reading Dr. Montroville W. Dickeson's American Numismatical Manual, published in 1859, and Augustus Heaton's Mint Marks, 1893, and I am deeply appreciative that those authors took time from their lives to write books that laid the foundation for later generations of numismatists to build upon.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many dealers involved in Treasury releases (and other distributions, such as the Redfield hoard of Morgan and Peace dollars) kept much information to themselves and were not willing to share it. Many groups of coins overhung the market, and many dealers believed that the price would be hurt if it was known that 100 of this coin or 500 of that one existed. I have kept notes on silver dollars for quite a few years. Over a period of time, certain people who were reticent to speak earlier have become more free with their information. Because of them, I believe the data in this book are more valid than information printed in any other earlier text. (For this reason, the figures in this book render obsolete those given in my 1979 book, Adventures With Rare Coins. I am always learning new things.)