Q. David Bowers
Eventually a man came to me who seemed to have connections in the right places. I told him to be on the lookout in the bank where he worked for these bags with "DADDIES" marked on them. And the next thing I know one day he came to my office and sold me four bags of Seated Liberty dollars.
How many bags of Seated Liberty dollars did I buy in all?
Well, there were those four, plus at least four from Charlie Dochkus, then one I bought from Steve Ruddel-which I later found out had come from Dochkus.
And another guy, whose name I don't remember, sold me four bags one night including a bag which had a thousand pieces of Uncirculated Seated Liberties. It contained '59-O's and '60-O's. It was a mixture of maybe 700 59-O's and 300 60-O's.
He also claimed to have a bag, which I never saw, of Uncirculated 1871 Seated dollars. He offered it to me, but I could not get together with him on price. I offered him $12,000 for the bag, which was pretty standard at the time. He then claimed he sold it somewhere else. (Perhaps this is the unseen (and later disproved) bag of 1,000 dollars I referred to in my 1979 book, Adventures With Rare Coins. Also see details under the 1871 listing below.) Like I said, I'm being honest. I never saw the bag. So I don't really know if it existed, but the same guy told me he had a bag of 1872 Seated dollars, and he sold me 30 pieces. I think he said he had handled four bags of Uncirculated Seated dollars.
Other than the Uncirculated 1859-O and 1860-O dollars that I had, I don't know of any other hoard quite that large [but see John Jay Ford, Jr. recollections below].
Let me tell you an interesting sidelight. At the time we were handling all of the Seated Liberty dollars we had our offices in Ruth's basement at 104 East 64th Avenue and one night I was over at Ruth's house, and there was knocking on the screen door. She went to open it up and she couldn't believe her eyes. Standing at the screen door was Michael Kolman, Sr. (Cleveland, Ohio dealer; proprietor of Federal Brand Enterprises and the Federal Coin Exchange.)
And he said, "I've heard that you've got four bags of Seated Liberty dollars. Don't ask me where I heard it. I just want to see them. Is it true?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Can I actually see them physically?" We took him down to the basement, we opened the safe, and we showed him the bags of Seated dollars.
He said, "Now, dare I ask it, can I buy them?" I said, "Well, you know, you made a trip."
He said, "No, I didn't go out of my way. I'm on my way to New York."
I sold him maybe 500 pieces. A hundred pieces out of each bag without looking. I just grabbed a handful out of this bag, a handful out of that bag, you know. If I remember I'd take like seven dollars a coin for the circulated stuff and maybe I'd charge I believe about $14 for the Uncircs or maybe I charged him $16 apiece. And I knew he was very happy because he couldn't believe that the stuff existed in that quantity, but it did exist in the Philadelphia Mint, I guess that's where it came from. Of course my stuff came from a bank by way of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve who got it from the Philadelphia Mint.
You ask how many bags of circulated dollars came on the market totally, how many I knew of at the time. Well, I had 10 or more, and I guess that others had some, too. I don't think there were all that many; a ballpark guess would be about 25 bags.
(In an earlier comment, published in my Adventures With Rare Coins book, 1979, p. 101, Harry suggested that perhaps 10,000 worn Liberty Seated dollars in all were released. However, it has not been until relatively recent times that many who handled quantities of dollars years ago have been free with their information. In the years since then, both Harry and I have heard many things from dealers who wished to remain silent in the 1970s, when large groups of undistributed dollars still overhung the market. However, in a letter dated May 17, 1992, Weimar W. White questioned the concept of dealers such as Harry Forman and me revising our earlier (circa late 1970s) estimates. I countered by suggesting that now that dealers are more distant from the situation, they are freer with their information, and more data can be gathered. For example, in the late 1980s and early 1990s much more information is in print on the content of the Redfield hoard (of Morgan and Peace dollars) than was ever in print at the time of its distribution in the late 1970s, when few wanted to discuss the situation. In the Morgan dollar section of the present work, much data, nearly all of which is previously unpublished, appears concerning hoards from the San Francisco Mint vaults and the Cash Room of the Treasury Building. This information was known to dealers in the 1970s, but no one came forth to detail it in print.) The coins were very, very cheap in those days, you know, Good ones would sell for $5, Very Good ones were going for $7, you know, the Very Fines were $8-$10. Like I told you, even Uncirculated ones, they were selling them for $16 to $18 wholesale. I remember trying to sell them to Johnny Rowe (Dallas dealer John N. Rowe III) for years, and he would turn them down. In the years 1965 through about 1967 I would always take a few rolls of Uncirculated Seated Liberty dollars to conventions and put them in my case, but no one asked about them. No one cared.
In addition to the bags I knew about there were others, too. You know that there were other people who found them. In addition, there were coins that I and others found in mixed bags. I am sure that bags of 1,000 Seated Liberty dollars were shipped to Las Vegas, as they were hungry for silver dollars, and they were getting coins stored in the Philadelphia Mint, too.
With regard to other Uncirculated dates, the '59-O and '60-O were the only dates that were really common. I remember having 50 or more coins totally of 1871 and maybe 30 or more of 1872. Ruth thinks we may have had more than that, but there were no really large quantities. I either found these mixed in bags or I bought them from someone who did; I don't recall.
With regard to Carson City dollars, I had them all. The most common was the 1870-CC. I think I had at least 10 of these, two or three 1871-CCs, and one 1873-CC.