Q. David Bowers
Jonah R. Shapiro Remembers
The following comments are from Jonah R. Shapiro, who in the early 1960s was a leading dealer in coins in quantity groups.(Letter to the author, September 21, 1992.) His business was conducted in Syracuse, New York.
I acquired a few of the first released bags of 1903-O and 1904-O dollars along with Tommy Ryan and Robert Rubin very early in release of a shipment to a bank in Detroit. I heard rumor of it all while attending a convention where I had JUST purchased an Uncirculated 1903-O dollar for some $1,800!
Within a few days, most of the banks in Chicago and Detroit were scoured for released dollars. While Harry J. Forman was doing his thing in Philadelphia and Washington, I set up a buying suite in Detroit where public ads brought the public in with silver dollars. John Abbott, who later had his own very successful coin business, was a runner for me during this phase.
Subsequently, I became a main wholesale supplier to Blaise Dantone, delivering a bag of 1903-O dollars to him at the airport in Miami during a Florida United Numismatists convention. They had been shipped to me by a source in Montana. Not many months later, at a fishing lodge in northern Ontario we used Uncirculated 1898-O and 1904-O dollars as poker chips! Lou Irwin and Sandy Rivshin of the Money Shop in Cleveland were with me, and Herman Pressman came along also.
But perhaps more interestingly: a few years PREVIOUS to the general release, Mr. Joseph Webb, then chief of the Cash Division of the Treasury Department in Washington had removed some bags of 1881-CC and 1885-CC silver dollars, which were then distributed to dealers by an agent, A.P. At that time, this distribution "broke" the market on those two dates BEFORE the 1963 release. Both people mentioned here are long dead. I knew them both WELL. There are other "interesting" details, but I prefer not to write about them now.
Just PRIOR to the release of the dollars, the roll "market" was speculating in bags of lowly late-date Lincoln pennies because other stuff in quantity was "used up." As soon as the dollars hit the market, money that was going into rolls, pennies, and Proof sets quickly switched to the more exciting dollars, common at $25 to $150 per bag over the $1,000 face value. This switch finished that orgy of roll and Proof set investment!
Ira Goldberg Remembers
Ira Goldberg, of the Superior Stamp & Coin Co., Inc., shared his recollections of silver dollars his firm handled in quantity, including the Stansbury hoard, a quantity which far eclipsed that of the more famous Redfield estate: (Letter dated February 27, 1992.)
We handled a large quantity of silver dollars in the mid-1970s. Unbeknownst to us, these were the tip of the iceberg part of the Redfield silver dollar hoard that later surfaced publicly in 1975-1976. (The Redfield estate is said to have 407,596 silver dollars, of which 351,259 were Uncirculated. Cf. John Highfill, The Comprehe.isiue U.S. Silver Dollar Encyclopedia, p. 93.) Through a bank in southern California we bought many bags of dollars from LaVere Redfield's widow. I remember one large group consisting of beautiful Uncirculated 1893 Morgans. I think that in all we sold 30 to 40 bags of dollars for the widow, not realizing that these were part of a larger group.
From about 1966 to 1985 we sold a large hoard of dollars amassed by "Curly" Stansbury, of Long Beach, California. This amounted to over 750,000 coins-over 750 bags-of Uncirculated pieces. Included were many Carson City coins, primarily 1878-CC, a great quantity of 1878 8 tail feather dollars and an immense number of 1878 7 over 8 tail feathers dollars. Stansbury passed away in 1984 or 1985.
Charles Slade's Market View
The following form letter was sent out by Charles ("Shotgun") Slade III, an Orlando, Florida dealer in rare coins. (Copy of letter furnished by Weimar W. White.) Dated April 17, 1964- just before the Treasury stopped releasing silver dollars-the text tells of his experiences in the market, as part of a listing of silver dollars he had for sale. At the time, Slade was one of the major advertisers in numismatic publications and a familiar figure at conventions. His words follow:
As I write this I have just returned from Dallas where I succeeded in picking up a fair number of the silver dollars I needed to fill orders. After the orders I received in the past several weeks I think that everyone reading this who is interested in dollars should have a look into what is available in Peace dollars.
There doesn't seem to have been any Peace dollars stored among the last 20 million coins in the Treasury, and in fact somewhere down the line one awful checking of Peace dollars must have taken place as you seldom see anything but an occasional1922 or 1923 in circulation.
Quite frankly, I have no axe to grind because I just don't have enough Peace dollars in inventory to even offer anything for sale in this letter. The best thing I did pick up was a small stock of 1878-7/8 TF dollars in BU rolls. All of the coins I bought showed at least three tail feathers protruding. Incidentally, here is the argument for an approximate 85 thousand mintage for these 1878-7/8 TF dollars. Five or six of us who have had occasion to look through a really large quantity of used silver dollars got together and compared notes. Based on every four to six 1878-8 TF dollars (also, there are a lot of 1878-8 TF dollars around in BU rolls which ratio also appears to be four or five to one). Now sincewe know the mintage of 1878-8 TF dollars to be 416,000, and estimating a ratio of five to one, the mintage of 1878-7/8 TF dollars comes out to about 83,000. If you toss in an argument to the effect that some of the 1878 8 TF dollars may have been melted, I say, "who cares, the ratio is still five to one," which simply means that the mintage of 1878-7/8 TF dollars must also be less.
Now, let's compare the 1878-7/8 TF dollars to the 1894 dollar, with a somewhat higher mintage of 111,000. Bags of 1894 dollars have been recently released. If the coin continues to sell in the $6,000 per roll class, can you name a sound reason why the 1878-7/8 TF dollar should not quickly pass $1,000 in value? I have 15 rolls of these coins for sale-limit three rolls per customer at $325 per roll. If you are interested you would be better off to telephone so that we can hold your order.
The 1888-O dollar appears to have been released in limited quantity. However, the price is considerably depressed because of the fact that everything which was to be released was dumped on the market at one shot. Quite frankly, silver dollars have been needed so badly out West for circulation that it is no longer possible to buy a bag of Uncirculated very common date dollars for $1,100 or $1,200, as we used to do. Instead, the commoner date stuff is being used for business purposes and only the relatively more scarce bags are trading hands right now, such as the above mentioned 1888-O. I obtained slightly over four bags of this coin and am able to offer BU rolls at the following very competitive prices: