Q. David Bowers
I have used all of these sources, besides examining many coins first-hand to come up with my estimates, As will be seen, the estimating methodology I used is somewhat different for each of the categories of Mint State coins, circulated coins, and Proofs, On the specific pages for each date and mintmark variety in the Liberty Seated dollar series I give my personal estimates as to the number known today of various business strikes and Proofs. These are just that: estimates. Precise figures will never be known. Relative to these estimates I give some general comments below.
But first, the words of Harry Forman are interesting and relevant:
Harry Forman's Recollections
I interviewed Harry Forman, who handled more quantities of Treasury-released silver dollars than anyone in the 1950s and 1960s. His comments on Liberty Seated coins, lightly edited, are given here-with. (Interview conducted February 27 and 28, 1992.) Certain of these are also reproduced under the individual entries to follow, such as 1859-O, 1860-O, etc.:
All right, I will begin by talking about Seated Liberty (Harry uses the term Seated Liberty, instead of Liberty Seated. It has only been in recent decades that the Liberty Seated term has been standardized in literature. In the 1950s and 1960s these were often called Seated Liberty coins by collectors and dealers alike.) dollars. I started going heavy into selling silver dollars in about 1962. Around 1959 Arnold Rosing (San Francisco professional numismatist) had written mea letter saying that gambling casinos in Las Vegas were pulling about 15 million silver dollars a year out of the Treasury and Mint holdings, and at the rate they were going with only 120 million dollars left, in eight years the mints would no longer have any silver dollars.
I recall writing him back to say that his timing was off because as the Vegas people kept pulling them, the supply would become less and less. The demand would increase, and silver dollars would go out more rapidly. My projection was that rather than the government dollars being .exhausted by 1967, they would be all gone by '65.
Back in the early '60s, I guess it was, we (Harry Forman and his associate, Ruth Bauer, who later became his business partner.) were kind of busy; We were getting a lot of dollars out of the Philadelphia area from the Philadelphia banks. These bags were coming out of the Philadelphia Mint, and these bags of circulated 'silver dollars-almost every one invariably had Seated Liberty dollars. In these bags were circulated Seated Liberty dollars. It was almost a sure thing that we would find at least one Seated Liberty dollar to each 10 Morgan dollars, and I used to keep kidding Ruth [Bauer] and say I'm going to find a rare '73-CC.
One night I really hit the jackpot. I was going through a bag of dollars which I almost: invariably did every night. Carson City Morgan dollars were a dime a dozen in these bags, and of course they didn't bring much either. You remember, Dave, that back then Uncirculated Carson City Morgan dollars were worth only slightly over face value, so worn ones brought very little premium at all. For example, a brand new 1878-CC sold for about three dollars singly, so what could a worn one have been worth? '
As I was saying, one night I really hit the jackpot. I found 65 Seated Liberty dollars, all circulated, in a bag, including a '73-CC and a '71-CC. If I remember it must have been 1 o'clock in the morning' but J had to telephone my associate Ruth Bauer and tell her about this great find that I had made.
Now every once in a while you also found an Uncirculated Seated Liberty dollar too, but they didn't bring a great amount of money. At that time nice Uncirculated Seated Liberty dollars were only $30 apiece. I remember struggling to make a modest profit. As long ago as 1967 I sold the late Sidney Smith (Miami, Florida dealer.) an Uncirculated roll [20 coins] of 1859-O, and that was my best roll, for $700, which is $35 a piece.'
Well, to make a long story short day I .heard that bags full of Seated Liberty silver dollars were being found and were coming out of the Philadelphia Millt. I didn't get them directly, but would buy them from my favorite Philadelphia coin dealer, Charlie Dochkus. You 'probably remember him, Dave. He was a vest-pocket dealer who rarely advertised. You might find some of his ads in The Numismatist, but these were not important to him. He did nearly all of his business with other dealers and knew them all. He used to send "care packages (Popular term from Committee for Allied Relief to Europe (CARE) packages sent by American citizens to needy Europeans after World War II.) of silver dollars to all of the dealers at that time. I think Charlie passed away around 1966.
While I was still in the fruit business in the early 1950s, before I became a full-time coin dealer, at the end of my day's work I would stop at Charlie's house and make more money dealing with Charlie than I had all day in my regular business. Of course, I was also picking up a lot of knowledge about the coin business as well. And Dochkus had connections. He had been a dealer for many, many year's: I would 'buy full bags of 1,000 circulated Seated Liberty dollars from him at prices which, at the time, cost me no more than six or seven thousand dollars. The bags always had "DADDIES" marked on the outside of them. (Apparently, a Treasury employee years earlier set these pieces aside as they were presented for redemption. The term, "dollars of our daddies," or "daddy dollars," was in common numismatic use in the nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries and is discussed elsewhere in the present text. It usually meant silver dollars of the 1794-1803 dates, not Liberty Seated issues, however, usage varied, and some applied it to Liberty Seated coins.)