Q. David Bowers
Business Strikes:
Enabling legislation: Act of January 18, 1837 (weight and fineness); Act of March 3, 1865 (motto)
Designer of obverse: Robert Ball Hughes (after Gobrecht)
Designer of reverse: J.B. Longacre (after Hughes and Reich)
Weight and composition: 412.5 grains; .900 silver, .100 copper
Melt-down (silver value) in year minted: $1.025
Dies prepared: Obverse: Unknown; Reverse: Unknown
Business strike mintage: 162,100; Delivery figures by day: January 28: 8,000; March 18: 14,000; April 16: 10,000; June 5: 12,000; July 20: 10,000; July 30: 11,300; October 21: 12,000; October 23: 13,000; November 11: 11,700; November 18: 24,000; December 2: 15,000; December 15: 11,700; December 29: 9,400.
Estimated quantity melted: Unknown
Approximate population MS-65. or better: 2 or 3 (URS-2)
Approximate population MS-64: 2 to 4 (URS-2)
Approximate population MS-63: 4 to 8 (URS-3)
Approximate population MS-60 to 62: 12 to 20 (URS-5)
Approximate population VF-20 to AU-58: 225 to 325 (URS-9)
Characteristics of striking: Most are well struck. Known hoards of Mint State coins: None
Proofs:
Dies prepared: Obverse: 2; Reverse: 1.
Proof mintage: 600; delivery dates: February 14: 200 delivered; March 2: 100; March 25: 100; April 28: 100; July 9: 100.
Approximate population Proof-65 or better: 38+/- (URS-7)
Approximate population Proof-64: 146+/- (URS-9)
Approximate population Proof-63: 95+/- (URS-8)
Approximate population Proof-60 to 62: 160+/- (URS-9)
Commentary
The 1868 business strike dollar is rarer than its mintage figures would indicate, for most were shipped to the Orient.
Additional Information
Silver Production Statistics
Silver production is an integral part of the study of nineteenth-century silver dollars. However, historical production statistics differ widely. Examples of this are provided by J. Laurence Laughlin, Ph.D., in The History of Bimetallism in the United States, 1900. The author quotes figures, no two of which are the same, from a variety of economic sources.
Taking as an example silver production in the world in the year 1868, he quoted Dr. Adolf Soetbeer's Aigure of $60,250,000; (Soetbeer achieved prominence in Germany in the 1850s and 1860s, was the author of numerous publications, and made an important report to the Ninth Congress of German Economists in 1868. Soetbeer's data were used at the U.S. Mint to calculate values of gold and silver for tables listing dates prior to the year 1838.) $50,000,000 from Journal des Economistes, March 1876; Sir Hector Hay's figure of $50,225,000; Ernest Seyd's similar figure of $50,225,000, Horton's figure of $46,750,000; and the U.S. Bureau of Statistics at $69,300,000. One might assume if one saw only the figure of $69,300,000 provided by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics that this precise-sounding figure was certainly approximately correct, without knowing that other estimates by authorities deemed worthy of quoting ranged as low as $46,750,000. Throughout nineteenth-century economics, precise-appearing figures give the feeling of numerical confidence not merited by the facts. The more one investigates the sources of such figures, the lower one's confidence in them becomes. Even if economics is now becoming a science, in the nineteenth century it only pretended to be.
A similar situation arises when one endeavors to determine the historical ratio of the value of gold to silver. Different economists have come up with different numbers. For example, for the year 1794, when dollars were first coined in the United States, Soetbeer quotes a ratio of 1 to 15.37, while White suggests 1 to 15.18, and Executive Document 117 of the First Session, 21st Congress, gives a figure of 15.32. Each figure appears to be meticulously calculated. While these ratios are fairly close in proximity, for the year 1812 the respective figures from these three sources vary considerably and are for silver 16.11, 14.09, and 15.04 to 1.
Similarly, the Annual Report of the Director of the Mint for various years quotes average annual silver prices to three or even five decimal points, a precision not backed up by actual market numbers, which were much less precise. Such "precision" arose from adding up hundreds of market figures for a given year and then dividing by the time interval involved.
As also noted later in this text (under the 1883 Morgan dollar), the averaging of many numbers could and did produce statistics of unintended precision, just as 2/3 or two-thirds, a proportion expressed casually, does not necessarily imply a precision of 0.6666666666+ etc.
The Year 1868 in History
President Andrew Johnson dismissed his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, on February 18, as Stanton had supported Republicans who favored retribution for the South and felt that properties there were fair game as the spoils of war. The House of Representatives voted on February 21 to impeach Johnson of "high crimes and misdemeanors." A lengthy trial ensued. Benjamin Wade, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the person in line to be president if Johnson was ousted, was so sure that Johnson would lose that he had already selected the members of his cabinet. On May 16th, a ballot in the Senate failed by one vote to achieve the necessary 2/3 majority needed for impeachment.
In June, Congress voted to readmit the seven states that formerly comprised the Confederate States of America, provided that blacks be allowed to vote.
In the presidential contest, U.S. Grant, running on the Republican ticket, was elected by the support of bankers and creditors who held bonds and wanted them repaid in gold, as opposed to the Democratic platform which provided for payment in paper money (of lesser value).
At the Philadelphia Mint a number of fancy pieces were made for private sale to collectors, especially after Dr. Henry Richard Linderman became director. Prominent among these was the famous 1868 large cent, of the Braided Hair design regularly used from 1843 to 1857. At that time there was no thought whatsoever to reviving the long-unused large cent format. Anthony C. Paquet designed an international coin denominated as 5 DOLLARS as well as 25 FRANCS, the result of a monetary conference held that year in Paris. For the next two decades one visionary or another would propound the idea of an international coinage, overlooking the fact that exchange rates varied on a daily basis.
Specie payments remained in suspension, and paper fractional currency notes took the place of dimes, quarters, and half dollars. Large quantities of silver began flowing into the Philadelphia Mint beginning in 1868, as bullion dealers became aware of a loophole in the Coinage Act of 1853 which permitted silver deposits to be converted into silver dollars.