Q. David Bowers
Enabling legislation: Act of April 2, 1792 (those struck to the 416-grain standard); Act of January 18, 1837 (those struck to the 412.5 grain standard)
Designer of obverse: Christian Gobrecht (after Thomas Sully)
Designer of reverse: Christian Gobrecht (after Titian Peale)
Statutory weight: 416 grains; .8924 silver, balance copper for pieces struck on planchets made before January 18, 1837; 412.5 grains; .900 silver, .100 copper for pieces struck on planchets made after that date.
Melt-down (silver value) in year minted: $1.009 (The bullion value of silver dollars is given in gold. The value in various paper bills would have been even more.)
Dies prepared (original issue): Obverse: 1; Reverse: 1
Business strike mintages
(1836 and 1839 Gobrecht dollars were not made with frosty or lustrous surfaces, as normally seen on business strikes. However, Proofs of these dates, because they were minted for business or circulation purposes are, in a way, business strikes. Here, they are listed separately under Proofs ) None
Proof mintage: 1,000 by December 31, 1836; 600 additional by March 31, 1837; unknown quantity of later issues, including restrikes. Delivery figures of originals by day: December 31, 1836: 400; December 31, 1836 (additional delivery same day): 600; March 31, 1837: 600.
Approximate population Proof-64 or betters: (About 60% to 70% of the coins in the total population of 1836 Gobrecht dollars are of die alignment I, and 30% to 40% are of die alignment N. Nearly all of the higher grade Proofs (Proof-64 or better) are alignment) 35-50 (URS-7)
Approximate population Proof-60 to 63: 100-200 (URS-8)
Approximate population VF-20 to Proof-58: 550 to 750 (URS-11)
Commentary
1,600 originals were minted in 1836-7. The 1836 dollar has no stars in the obverse field and stars in the reverse field. These and the original 1839s are the only Proofs minted for circulation.
An 1833 View of the Silver-Gold Ratio
The following explanation is from History of Paper Money and Banking in the United States, by William M. Gouge, 1833, p. 106, and gives a fairly clear exposition of problems surrounding the ratio of silver and gold at the time, a question which was pivotal to the circulation of silver dollars:
"The money unit of the United States is the dollar, consisting of 416 grains of standard silver, or 371 1/4 grains of pure silver and 34 3/4 grains of alloy. All our contracts are to pay and receive dollars; all our accounts are kept in dollars. The dollar is thus our money of both account and contract, and its legal value is fixed by our having a coin of the same name, containing the quantity of pure silver and alloy which has just been mentioned.
"Gold is, in the spirit of our laws, a subsidiary currency, its value being computed in silver dollars. At the United States Mint it is rated as fifteen to one-that is to say, one ounce of gold is considered as worth fifteen ounces of silver; or, what is the same thing, as many grains of pure gold as are equal to the number of grains of pure silver contained in a dollar, are coined into an eagle and a half eagle, and estimated at the mint as worth $15.00.
"The market rate of gold to silver, as determined by sales of gold bullion and silver bullion, in a series of years past, is about 15.8 to 1. Consequently, if the Mint rate corresponded with the market rate, the quantity of pure gold contained in an eagle and a half eagle ought to be estimated at the mint at about $15.80.
"The undervaluation of gold at the Mint is not the reason that it has disappeared from circulation. Eagles have disappeared for the same reason that dollars have disappeared. Whenever bank notes are used, no more specie is retained in a country than is necessary for transactions of a smaller amount than the least denomination of paper, and is necessary for meeting the few stray notes that may be presented to the banks for payment. It has been found impossible in England to make sovereigns and one pound notes circulate currently; and we all know that small notes in the United States have not only driven away gold coins, but also such silver coins as are of a higher denomination than a half dollar.
"If bank notes had never been introduced, eagles, half eagles, and quarter-eagles would have continued in circulation, notwithstanding the undervaluation of gold at the Mint. The eagle would not have been current at the rate of $10.00; but at the rate of $10.50, $10.75-or whatever else it would have been worth. The calculation of the fraction would have been productive of some inconvenience; but the utility of gold coins, in large transactions, would have made them current at a rate probably a little above that which they have borne in the bullion market.
"A new gold coinage is. desirable; but the proposition to coin eagles of a less weight than the eagles of former times, is not entirely free from objection. As all our contracts are to pay in dollars, and as there is no gold at present in circulation, an issue of a new coin, called an eagle, which should be of the exact value of ten dollars, would cause no practical injustice. But the issue of a new coin of different: weight from the old, and yet bearing the same name, might give countenance to the idea that money is something which owes its value to the authority of government, and lead, perhaps, at some future time, to an alteration in the dollar-an alteration in our true standard of value .. "
Notes: Overvalued forms of money circulate in preference to undervalued. The public has always preferred to hoard specie and spend paper; the latter was often traded at a sharp discount in terms of specie. Two equivalent values of money, one of silver and of full weight of a dollar and the other of paper and of no intrinsic value, could not each circulate at par.
In 1833 the idea of a fiduciary coinage--coins worth less than intrinsic value than the face value stamped upon them was not acceptable in the silver and gold series. And yet, to mint coins of full weight and value meant that the slightest upward change in the market value of either gold or silver would result in the withdrawal from circulation and the melting of coins made of the metal affected. The Mint could not at the same time serve these two conflicting considerations: coins of full value and coins with the ability to remain in circulation over a protracted period of time despite bullion fluctuations.
The Act of June '28, 1834 (implemented at the Mint on August 1, 1834) lowered the weights of gold coins, and coins of this metal were once again seen in circulation.