Q. David Bowers
The 1960s
When I left home for college, my coin collecting almost came to a standstill. At that time I only lacked about 12 or 13 dollars for completing my set. Most of them were the CC minted dollars. All of the dates and mintmarks of the Peace dollar series could be located from circulation. I had bought a beautiful choice AU 1878 7/8 tail feathers for my set. During the Christmas season of 1962, 1903-O and 1898-O mint condition dollars were released into Detroit. I was home for the holiday and I found this to be very exciting. My mother also was a silver dollar set collector, and she purchased these two dollars for me. The cost for the 1903-O was only $15! I was thrilled to have what was considered just a few weeks earlier, a very rare coin! It was just a thrill to hold such a coin. The 1898-O was only $3! In earlier days, my mother and I never found these coins from rolls and bags obtained from banks.
After the holidays, I went back to school to finish my senior year. Shortly after that, I heard from my mother. She had obtained a bag of 1,000 silver dollars from the head teller of a bank. The teller ordered this bag from the Federal Reserve at my mother's request. My mother said the bag had a sealed dated tag of 1911! She also said the bag was loaded with some good Morgan silver dollars, and she was going to order another bag!
Spring (1963) break found me home again from college, and the same bank's head teller called my mother and stated he had another bag for her. She and I with much excitement retrieved this bag. It also was sealed during 1911. This bag of 1,000 silver dollars had all of the coins I needed to complete my silver dollar set, except the Philadelphia 1895 dollar, a coin which was never found. As I remember, the 1893-S found from this bag had a lot of wear. I can't remember the conditions of the CC minted silver dollars found in this bag.
All totaled, my mother received five $1,000 bags. While very few Morgan dollars carried a premium over face during that time, she sold the ones that did to a coin dealer and netted more than a $1,000 profit. The majority of these dollars were returned to another bank.
After graduation from college, I was drafted into the military service. After training I was sent to Europe where I completed my time. When I came back during the summer of 1965, to my great disappointment, the silver dollar era was over! The silver dollars were completely gone from the banks!
January 1970, my wife and I moved into our first house. I removed the dollars dated 1878, the 1898-O and 1903-O dollars from my set and sold the rest of them to enable us to pay cash for our furniture. This was a quick, butpoor decision. All of my other sets from the cent up were sold, but to this very day, how I regret that I sold my silver dollars. Many times I have longed to look at this set, which took eight years to complete. There are many fond memories associated with this set. Fortunately I still have the 1878-dated dollars from this set.
The reality of obtaining beautiful silver dollars from banks at face value in grades of AU and better are gone forever. Only the memories of those special days will be with me for the rest of my life. The mints produced many millions of unwanted, non-needed beautiful silver dollars during the last century. This act alone affected hundreds of thousands of future Americans during the second half of the following century. I am one of these Americans! Silver dollars were a part of my life and that part is gone and it is greatly missed.
Summary
The wealth of details presented in the recollections just given will add immeasurably to the fund of information already in print by modern authors.
Especially valuable, in my opinion, are the facts concerning the Cash Room at the Treasury Department, a situation virtually completely overlooked in recent times. More on the later happenings at the Cash Room is given below. Note that Treasury employees feigned surprise that all of these old dollars had numismatic value. Never mind that insiders at the Treasury Building had been selling them off for years to collectors and dealers!
Newspaper Accounts
The following newspaper accounts are from the files of Coin World and are selected from many dozens of stories printed across America during the closing days of the silver dollar in America. (Courtesy of Beth Deisher, editor of Coin World, who found this cache of old clippings in a file cabinet.)
Silver Dollars to Reno
The following article appeared in The Reno Times, March 19, 1964. $ 1.5 Million: Reno Gets Its Biggest "Cartwheel" Shipment:
RENO-The largest single shipment of silver dollars-1.5 million of them-ever sent to this Nevada gambling center has arrived here in two vans and an armored car which brought them from Washington; D.C.; in a day-and-night, cross-country move.
Reason for the shipment was the acute shortage of the "cartwheels," used as chips in dollar bets on gambling tables and in dollar slot machines. Officials say that the silver dollar may disappear completely from circulation by June.
Aggravating the shortage was Miss Eva Adams, director of the Mint and a native Nevadan. She had announced in February that unless Congress authorized a new minting, the coin so familiar in the West would disappear completely. This started a run on silver dollars [by] collectors and plain citizens who wanted to be sure they had some as souvenirs before they vanished.
About half the emergency shipment to Reno from Washington was distributed under police guard to casinos here. The rest was put into vaults at the main office of the First National Bank of Nevada for temporary storage. They will move out to the casinos and other local businesses only as needed.
The mint has turned out no new silver dollars since 1935, and only about 25 million of them are currently in circulation, mainly in Nevada and Montana. Western congressmen and other high officials are currently pushing to have another 150 million of the cartwheels minted.