Q. David Bowers
Collecting Mint State Dollars
Rarity of Mint State Examples
For some years of the Liberty Seated dollar series Mint State coins an: rarer than Proofs. If your goal is to build a set of aesthetically desirable pieces at the MS-63 level or higher, it can be said with certainty that your task will never be finished. Even to acquire the Philadelphia Mint dates 1840-1850 will in this grade is an enormous challenge and one that will likely not meet with success. To be sure, some dates are available, including a few toward the end of the series in the 1870s, as well as the 1859-O and 1860-O and coins. Other than the 1859-O and 1860-O (and even most of these hoard, coins are in lower Mint State grades such as the MS-60 and MS-61), mintmarks, in Mint State are a virtual impossibility, with 1846-O, 1850-6, and 1859-S being major rarities in 'this regard, followed in the same category by the Carson City coins Of 1870-CC through 1873-CC, the 1870-S (just one may exist in Mint State), and the unappreciated 1872-S.
What, then, should the numismatist who wants a top grade set buy? Probably the best method is to buy Proofs of Philadelphia Mint dates from 1858 through 1873; these are readily available. Philadelphia Mint coins 1840-1857, buy Mint State, or Proof coins as they become available, which will result in a mixed set, but one of high quality. With regard to branch mint coins, with the exception of the 1859-O and 1860-O (which you can find in MS-63 or better grade if you are persistent enough), buy them in attractive EF-45, then upgrade them as better pieces become available.
Collecting Proof Dollars
Characteristics of Proofs
Proofs are characterized by wide rims, sharper details (usually) than business strikes, full unequivocal Proof surface in all areas of the obverse and reverse fields, and full Proof surface within the vertical shield stripes on the reverse. This last comment is true for the identification of all Proofs 1840-1873, with the exception of 1852.
The collector desiring Proof coins must take the numismatic record with many grains of salt. For many years, particularly prior to the advent of certified, encapsulated grading (beginning with the Professional Coin Grading Service-known as PCGS-in 1986, followed by the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation of America-known as NGC-in 1987, and other services), coins of the 1840-1850 era catalogued as "Proof'' were apt to be AU or low-end Uncirculated coins, often polished.
Thus, anyone attempting to study the population of such is forewarned that Elder, Frossard, Mehl, et al. catalogues are nearly worthless in this regard, except in the relatively rare instances in which intact Proof sets were offered of a particular year. Happily, the same situation did not exist for Proofs of later dates, and those of the decades of the 1860s and 1870s, if offered as Proofs, were nearly always Proofs.
Often, the attribution of an 1840-1857 Liberty Seated dollar as a Proof was mere wishful thinking based upon seeing some prooflike surface on a business strike, or the surface of a heavily toned prooflike coin, or, in the worst instance, the surface of a coin which had polished fields. This situation is verified by the regrading of such coins when they appear on the market today accompanied by their pedigrees to this or that old-time sale. Of course, there are many exceptions, and many coins described as Proofs were indeed such. This is particularly true of collections containing original Mint Proof sets dispersed in the late nineteenth century and very early twentieth century.
On a more positive note, I consider PCGS and NGC data (covering coins certified and graded since 1986-87) reliable, and modern grading by the American Numismatic Association Certification Service (ANACS) and the American Numismatic Association Authentication Bureau (ANAAB) to be useful.
My estimates of the number of Proofs minted may seem overly generous in view of the relative lack of examples on the market today, but as Walter H. Breen has pointed out in his Proof coins Encyclopedia, such Proof coins were readily available to anyone desiring them at the time of issue. In the intervening century or more, many were deliberately spent and others met various other fates.
Originals and Restrikes
It is evident that the Mint restruck certain Proof Liberty Seated silver dollars. This restriking probably occurred circa 1858-1863, when collectors' requests for the 1856 Flying Eagle cent induced the Mint to begin producing a spate of restrikes of this coin, to meet market demand (a coin with a face value of one cent had a market value of $1 to $2, which was equal to a day's wages at the time). Soon, certain employees (notably George and Theodore Eckfeldt, the "Midnight Minters") considered the Mint to be "a workshop for their gain," as numismatic historian Don Taxay called a chapter in his book, U.S. Mint and Coinage.
The 1804-dated silver dollars, 1827 restrike quarters, Gobrecht and 1851-1952 dollar restrikes, and half cent restrikes (1831, 1836-1848, 1849 Small Date, and 1852) were made between about 1858 and mid-1860 (and possibly in the late 1860s as well), with a variety of restrikes of patterns in silver and copper.
Many if not most specialists believe that 1853 Proof dollars date to circa 1862; the 1863-4-5 silver coins with IN GOD WE TRUST to about 1867-1968. Silver dollars of 1840-1850 and 1852, with what Walter H. Breen described as the Reverse of 1840-1849 (see description under 1840 below; revised in the present text to the Reverse of 1840-1850, as the die was also used in 1850) are of uncertain date.
Distinguishing originals from restrikes of the Proofs dated in the 1840s is difficult. Walter H. Breen writes the following.(Walter Breen's Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Proof Coins, 1722-1989, pp. 259-260.) "It is possible that some of the Proofs of 1840-1849 and 1852 with the original reverse ... may be restrikes, although many are certainly originals. Those with unusually pronounced knife-rims are thought to be restrikes." (Walter H. Breen thinks this because certain half cents identified as restrikes (e.g., 1840-1848 with small berries reverse; two reverses each) often have knife-rims. Many coins known for other reasons to be restrikes also show them, or have file marks where knife-rims had been removed. Knife-rims testify to the use of old worn-out collars, or too close die spacing. Collars were and are scheduled for discard and replacement before they stretch enough to give coins struck in them a "fin," which is the Mint's term for knife-rims.)
While it is popular to suggest that dollars were restruck circa 1858-1863, and they probably were, it is also likely that restriking was carded out for a longer time after that. It is known that contrary to Mint regulations and pious declarations of innocence, during the late 1860s and 1870s the chief coiner at the Philadelphia Mint possessed a supply of earlier-dated dies.