Silver Dollars & Trade Dollars of the United States - A Complete Encyclopedia

The 1860s
Director Snowden did not like having to cut back the silver coinages that he had grown accustomed to, and petitioned the Treasury to institute design changes on the coinage. The director hoped in this way to increase mintages and thus improve the Mint's public image. The Treasury accepted design changes for the cent, half dime, and dime, but refused to allow the other suggestions. One of these was for Columbus to appear on the tipper-value coins!

The strong coinages of silver dollars at New Orleans and Philadelphia are not as common on the numismatic market as their mintage suggest they ought to be, although the New Orleans mintage does show up more often than its northern cousin. There was no dollar coinage at New Orleans in 1861, probably because the Nevada silver hid' stopped flowing to that part of the country. War clouds were on the horizon and this-affected the movements of bullion. Northern merchants and banks transferred funds out of the South whenever it was possible to do so in the winter of 1860-1861.

Philadelphia continued to coin dollars into 1861, but most of the 77,500 pieces struck for circulation were coined in January and February with the remaining 27,500 produced at odd times through the end of June. With minor exceptions the coinage of dollars for depositors did not resume until July 1862.

One reason that dollar coinage was light in 1861 and 1862 had to do with the war. Until June 1862 minor silver coin was generally at par with the newly issued "greenback" paper currency (gold had left circulation in December 1861), and the mints were hard-pressed to keep up with the demand. Desperate for bullion, the new director of the Mint, James Pollock, was able to get a considerable number of silver dollars from New York banks as bullion for his minor coinage. (Large numbers of gold dollars were melted for double eagle coinage at the same time.)

This mass melting of silver dollars in 1861-1862 clearly affected the rarity of several dates, but primarily the Philadelphia issues of 1859-1860 as these would have been the dates most commonly found in bank vaults. The meltings of 1849-1853 and 1861-1862 took a heavy toll of the supply of 1840-1860 dollars, and it has to he assumed that even some of the Gobrechts of 1836-1839 were caught up in this search for bullion. Collectors may have distinguished rare from common dates, but banks and bullion dealers had little interest in such matters in 1861.

On more than one occasion during the war Director Pollock suggested that the dollar be abolished as a waste of the Mint's time. In April 1863 he noted that "Practically the whole silver dollar no longer enters into our monetary system. The few pieces made are for Asiatic and other foreign trade and are not seen in circulation." His remarks also refer to the 1850s when currency was normal and not affected by the war. The only coins in common daily use after June 1862 were the copper-nickel cents; a few times were also still around but they would be gone by early in 1863.

.In June 1868 Director Henry Richard Linderman noted that "In fact, whole [silver] dollars are merely coined for the East India trade and for coin collectors:' It is not clear if China was included in Linderman's definition of the East India trade, .but whatever the destination of these coins, it was clearly not for the domestic marketplace. Small wonder then that successive directors lobbied for the denomination to be abolished,

Proofs
Proof coins' were first sold to the public about 1817 and from then through 1859 (except as noted in the next paragraph) 'the pieces were always sold at face value. The collector had to pay postage and insurance, however, if he did not live close to the Mint and the pieces had to go by mail or express.

The exceptions to the above are twofold. First, in the 1840s Chief Coiner Franklin Peale made tip sets of coins in cases and sold them at a premium. The other exception was that after 1852 individual silver dollars were always sold at $1.08; the extra eight tents added because Director Snowden considered the half dollar as a standard and valued the dollar accordingly. It made no difference 'whether the coin was Proof or a business strike as there was no charge prior to 1860 for the Proof finish.

At the beginning of 1860 there were discussions at the Mint between the director and other officers on how to handle the Proof coinage. Sales had grown considerably over the past few years, and Snowden thought that Proofs should realize a profit for the benefit of the government. The others agreed, and prices were fixed both for sets and individual pieces. The silver set, which still contained the cent, was priced at $3.