Q. David Bowers
19th-Century Collecting Preferences
If you look through coin dealers' price lists of the 1890s and early 1900s you will often see trade dollars priced on a retail basis at 85 to 95 cents each or even less. At auctions, specimens would often sell for in the range of 60 to 90 cents. For example, in Ed. Frossard's sale of the New Jersey Collection, March 8, 1898, a Proof 1877 trade dollar sold for 60 cents, as did a Proof 1878, and an Uncirculated 1878-S fetched 55 cents! This seems rather strange now in view of the present-day numismatic premiums attached to them. However, the pricing is explained by the fact that at the time the coins were not redeemable at face value and, as John M. Willem put it in on the cover of his book, the denomination was "unwanted" and "dishonored." (In the price charts given under the individual date and mintmark sections, a minimum retail value of $0.90 is placed on the trade dollar; few retail price listings were below this figure, although numerous auction realizations were.)
Collectors of the era considered the trade dollar to be more of a bullion disc for export than an interesting numismatic item to be included in a cabinet. Those collectors who desired trade dollars nearly all opted to buy Proofs each year. Mint-marked issues of the Carson City and San Francisco Mints were nearly universally ignored, and probably not a single collector took notice in 1873 when such coins were first made. It was not until well after the appearance of Augustus C. Heaton's book, Mint Marks, in 1893 that more than just a few numismatists began to take serious notice of mintmarked varieties in different series, and it was not until after the turn of the century that collecting by these varieties became widespread. (Collecting by date and mint took a giant leap forward in August 1909 when it was widely publicized that one-cent pieces of the new Lincoln design, from the San Francisco Mint, were rare and valuable. Gradually, enthusiasm thus generated extended to other denominations. Texas dealer B. Max Mehl told the author that in 1903, when Mehl began business, he did not bother to sort Barber dimes, quarters, and half dollars by mintmark varieties, but sold them all at a common price. By a decade later, 1913, scarce Barber coins were worth more than common dates.)
In 1893, Heaton wrote the following about branch mint trade dollars:
THE CC MINT TRADE DOLLARS: Were issued contemporaneously with those of the S Mint during the years from 1873 to '78 inclusive. Though coined in smaller quantities the amount in circulation before the recall of the piece was not limited enough in any date to cause even scarcity. But if those remaining in the possession of collectors and dealers are proportioned relatively to the original coinage, the date of 1878 should be the most difficult to find.
The trade dollar 1873-CC has a medium sized, widely separated mintmark over the space before the D and the D itself. 1874 shows a small close pair of CC's in the same position. In 1875 the CC's are medium in size and close together over the space.
1876 has medium and close CC's over the space and the D.
1877 repeats these details.
1878 offers the largest CC of all. The letters are close together and are over the D and the space to the right.
THE S MINT TRADE DOLLARS:
1873, on the obverse of which is Liberty seated upon a bale with other details, has as mintmark a very small s over the D slightly to the left.
1874 has a small S in a similar position.
1875 offers two varieties, a very small and a medium sized S placed as before, but rather more to the left of D.
1876 has a medium S in the same location.
In 1877 there is no change of mintmark, but, in addition to the regular piece, there is a curious variety resulting from the slipping of the "collar" in the process of coinage. This gives an edge milled through half its thickness only, the rest being plain. The variety is known as the 1877 S-mint halfmilled dollar, and is rare.
1878 has the same rare variety. The regular piece has the S more nearly over the D.
After 1873 the trade dollars were coined by millions annually, and no date should ordinarily be rare, but owing to export and the recall of about the entire amount of trade dollars once in circulation, few really exist out of dealers' and collectors' hands.
Even Proof trade dollars were not popular in the late nineteenth century, and it was often (perhaps even usually) the practice in the early years of the trade dollar, when such coins were automatically included as part of silver Proof sets (which was done from 1874 through 1878; earlier and later issues were sold separately), to pluck them out and spend them. Prior to the demonetization of the trade dollar on July 22, 1876, such coins could be passed off for face value. This may help account for the rarity today of Proof trade dollars dated 1873 and 1874.
By the year 1900, at the end of the nineteenth century, trade dollars were collected by only a few numismatists, of whom probably no more than a dozen aspired to own varieties from the Carson City and San Francisco mints.
The desire for pattern trade dollars was another thing entirely, and the limited numbers of these available, mostly of issues dated 1872 and 1873, found a ready market. However, the demand was limited to just a few dozen collectors, if even that many, for most patterns were made in quantities of fewer than 50 pieces.
If you had been a collector in the 1890s and were seeking numismatic information concerning this denomination, virtually nothing would have been available in print. About the only meaningful synopsis of the series in that decade appeared in The Numismatist, December 1891, just a month after the American Numismatic Association was formed. The commentary is reprinted below: