Q. David Bowers
An 1873-S is Discovered?
Collectors' Weekly, published in Kermit, Texas, October 26, 1971, carried the following article under the byline of the owner, Frank B. Knight.
"Rare Coin Find Reported: 1873-S Silver Dollar With Baby Teetherl:
"An 1873-S dollar has been reported found in Nevada. If the coin is authenticated and offered on the numismatic market, it may challenge the 1913 Liberty nickel and the 1804 silver dollar in both price and public acclaim .... Mint records reflect 700 Liberty Seated dollars struck in 1873 at the San Francisco Mint with the S mintmark. Yet throughout the years, no specimen has been known in any collection. Although details were not yet available, Terry DuPont III of Fallon, Nevada, supplied this exclusive report to Collectors' Weekly.
" 'I received a telephone call from an acquaintance who was aware that I collected merchant trade tokens, some gold coins and a few type coins. He inquired if I had a coin book. Assured that I did have, he asked me to look up a few for him. The coin identities came over the phone and I checked them out for him. There were a few Liberty Seated halves and dimes, some old nickels and a Flying Eagle cent. Then he told me that there was a silver dollar, an 1873-S, with a hole in it that was probably not worth looking up. Being a novice myself, and also wishing to get it all done at once to avoid being given the assignment later, I assured him I'd look anyway. Then, 'what date and mintmark was that?' I screamed after finding the right place in the Red Book.
" 'This occurred on May 12,1971, and since that time the owner has been researching his liability, tax and otherwise. He doesn't need additional wealth but realizes that the rarity of the piece will forbid its retention by an average citizen. Although the full details cannot yet be given, the history of the coin is this: For 98 years this coin has been in the same family, a group which has consistently held and cherished all family mementoes. The great-great grandfather worked in the San Francisco Mint, a fact readily provable. So when the great-grandfather of the present owner was born in 1873, what was more logical than the Mint employee-parent buying the birth year dollar.'
" 'To this point, the proud 1873 father's judgment was sound. But the new dad took a unique and breathlessly rare coin to a jeweler and had it holed. The ribbon, which is still on the coin, was looped through the hole. The coin was then hung from the cradle's protective side for the baby to use as a teether.
" 'The only breath of relief that I can get out of this is that this was taken away from the kid [before more damage was done to it].' " The article went on to say that the coin passed through the family and was later shown to DuPont.
Harry X Boosel kept in touch with Terry DuPont, who informed him that not only had he seen the 1873-S Liberty Seated dollar, but at one time had it in his possession for 10 days. The owner of the dollar, said to be a retired fireman in Fallon, then became very wary of Terry DuPont and everyone else, and refused to talk further to DuPont or to show the dollar to anyone. In fact, it is said that he acquired an 1873-S trade dollar and had a hole drilled in it, so if anyone asked him about the rare 1873-S Liberty Seated dollar, he would show them the trade dollar instead, and say that the publicity had been in error. Harry Boosel's last letter to DuPont was dated July 1980 and was returned by the post office marked "deceased."
A Plea For Silver Dollars in 1876
The Annual Report of the Director of the Mint, 1876, discussed the situation of the silver dollar and drew upon an 1861 commentary. At the time Director Henry Richard Linderman was reviewing current (1876) proposals for the coinage of legal tender silver dollars under a double standard:
"For many years prior to 1873 gold appears to have been recognized as the monetary standard of the United States in legislation and in Treasury transactions. The Act of February 21, 1853, demonetizing silver coins, authorized their issue in exchange only for gold coins, and gold coins thus received were to be used in the purchase of silver bullion for coinage of fractional pieces. This act wholly ignored the silver dollar. The Act of March 3, 1863 authorized the Treasury to receive deposits of gold coins and gold bullion, and to issue certificates therefor, in sums of not less than twenty dollars, corresponding with the denominations of United States notes, and redeemable in gold coin on demand. This act shows unmistakably that gold and not silver obligations had to be provided for.
"In the Mint Report for 1861 the then director, ex-Governor Pollock, made the following observations in reference to the positions of the gold and silver dollars: ... (The 1861 report is quoted earlier in the present text under the 1861 Liberty Seated dollar.)
"Foreign exchanges have been adjusted for many years on a gold basis, and it cannot be ascertained that the silver dollar ever entered to any extent into the fixing of international tariffs or in United States receipts and payments. Taking these facts into consideration, and notwithstanding the silver dollar occupied by law the position of an unlimited tender, it appears that the general understanding at home and abroad has been that the money of coin payments in this country since 1834 was gold, and that when the word coin was used in connection with the financial transactions of the government, it meant gold coin.
"The silver dollar certainly could not have been intended as the money in which coin obligations were to be discharged, for the reason that from 1834 to 1873 it had rarely appeared in circulation, and during the greater portion of that time was at a premium, the general range of which was from 1 % to 5%. (Director Linderman is possibly slightly confused here, for beginning in August 1834, it was gold coins of earlier production that were rarely seen in circulation. Silver dollars circulated fairly extensively (within the context of the relatively small numbers made) from the first Liberty Seated issue in 1840 until the rise in price of silver and the devaluation of other silver denominations in the spring of 1853. From about 1804 through July 1840, federal silver dollars were not often seen in circulation, except for sa mall number of Gobrecht dollars from early 1837.)
"The Coinage Act of 1873, insofar as it made gold the standard of value, simply confirmed the position which that metal had practically held in this country for a period of 38 years. Prior to 1860 (Sic; should read "prior to 1859," in view of the vast discoveries of silver in Nevada in 1859.) little or no silver, except that contained in native gold, had been produced in the United States, but there had been continuous yield of gold for 30 years, and our country was known allover the world as a gold country.
"In modern times there has never been, so far as the director has been able to ascertain, an instance of a government undertaking to establish unlimited legal tender coins at a value above that of the commercial rate of bullion. On the contrary, the actual commercial relation of the precious metals appears in all cases to have been taken into account in fixing money standards, and the metals valued in the unlimited tender coinage strictly in conformity therewith, except in a few instances, where a trifling seigniorage had been exacted to cover the cost of coinage.
"The foregoing reference to the silver dollar of 412-1/2 grains appears to be called for from the fact that an idea prevails to some extent that if its coinage without restriction as to legal tender should again be authorized, it would, without further provision of law, occupy the position of a legal tender as to all unsettled debts and unexpired obligations made prior to April 1, 1873.