Q. David Bowers
Business Strikes:
Enabling legislation: Act of February 28, 1878, plus the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of July 14, 1890
Designer: George T. Morgan
Weight and composition: 412.S grains; .900 silver, .100 copper
Melt-down (silver value) in year minted: $0.41960
Dies prepared: Obverse: Unknown; Reverse: Unknown.
Business strike mintage: 4,450,000; Delivery figures by month: January: 1,000,000; February: 350,000; March: 500,000; April: 500,000; May: 500,000; June: 1,250,000; July: none; August: none; September: none; October: none; November: none; December: 350,000.
Estimated quantity melted: Probably about 4,000,000 under the terms of the 1915 Pittman Act.
Approximate population MS-65 or better: 10,000 to 20,000 (URS-15)
Approximate population MS-64: 20,000 to 40,000 (URS-16)
Approximate population MS-63: 40,000 to 80,000 (URS-17)
Approximate population MS-60 to 62: 120,000 to 240,000 (URS-18)
Approximate population G-4 to AU-58: 3,000 to 6,000, mostly in lower grades such as VG and Fine. (URS-13)
Availability of prooflike coins: Prooflike coins are slightly scarce, have low contrast. DMPL coins are scarcer.
Characteristics of striking: Varies from weak to sharp, but is mostly average to above average.
Known hoards of Mint State coins: Probably somewhere between 200,000 and 350,000 coins were released in the autumn of 1962; prior to this time a Mint State 1903-Owas believed to be a great rarity, only a few were known.
Proofs:
None
Commentary
The 1903-O is the most famous of all mint marked Morgan dollars from a legend and lore viewpoint, it being the center of attention in the great 1962-1964 Treasury release of silver dollars.
An Early Appreciation of Rarity
The Numismatist, July 1925, printed this note by Howard R. Newcomb:
"There seems to be something peculiar about the standard silver dollar of 1903 issued from the New Orleans Mint. Al-though the government records indicate a coinage of 4.45 million pieces, I failed to locate, in the last half dozen years, any specimens either in the hands of dealers or collectors, save one in my own collection and one in a prominent collection in Washington, D.C. They seem to be equally scarce even in circulation.
"Although silver dollars were not plentiful in circulation in these parts [Newcomb lived in Detroit], I have enlisted the aid of the head cashiers in three of our larger stores to be on the lookout for this piece. It is customary in these stores when silver dollars are received not to give them out again in making change, but to deposit all of them. These men, for several years, have looked over thousands of silver dollars and not one has come to light. Two of our A.N.A. members, one in Los Angeles, the other in San Francisco, have also searched where the silver dollar is plentiful and they, too, have been unable to find any. The only explanation I can offer is that the government, during the late war, sold the entire mintage as bullion and the entire mintage rested in the government vault, undisturbed, until that time when so many millions of silver dollars were melted up."
Apropos of Newcomb's comment, the editor of The Numismatist Frank Duffield said: "Silver dollars are not collected extensively, but if they were, it is morethan probable that other dates and mintmarks would be found to be far rarer than the recorded coinage would indicate."
The Rare 1903-O
In the September 1926 number of The Numismatist, Will W.Neil, of Baldwin, Kansas, in a letter to the editor dated July 23, 1926, noted that he had been looking through coins for eight years in connection with his drugstore business:
"Of the silver dollars from 1878 to 1904 I found one com-plete set, all dates and mints, and several varieties .... I then started a second set and have it complete with the lone exception of 1903-O, which is a tough fellow to find. I suppose I have looked over five million silver dollars to find the one I have. I have found most of the other pieces that he [Mr. Thresher, who had written earlier on the same subject] could not locate, with the exception of the two rarities."
Recollections of a 1903-0 Hoard
In 1991 John Pancratz shared his recollections concerning a hoard of 1903-O Morgan dollars:
"Dear Mr. Bowers:
"I recently came across an article of yours in the February 27, 1991 Coin World on the subject of the 1903-O Morgan dollar. The subject has fascinated me for years as I have had an indirect involvement in this subject and since you write articles and books I will relate to you what information I have acquired on the 1903-O dollars that have passed through this area.
"In 1962 Seattle had a World's Fair and a private concern organized a Million Dollar Display as part of the exhibits. This received a great deal of publicity and even merited inclusion as one of the 10 subjects for the Fair's official medal set.
"The one million silver dollars were ordered from the Fed-eral Reserve and were shipped in mint bags by armored car to the Seattle Fair site from the San Francisco Mint. With much public relations photography, they were dumped from the bags into a wire cage which constituted the Million Dollar exhibit. These were Uncirculated Morgan and Peace dollars. Approximately 200,000 Uncirculated dollars were sold by the exhibitor for souvenirs.
"In November of 1962 when the exhibit closed, the employees rolled up the remaining displayed dollars in standard paper bank tubes with the Exhibit title stamped on the roll. I believe that there was at least one bag from each of the years 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904 with the Omintmark in the center of the exhibit. I know many collectors who visited the Exhibit and none recall seeing any of the dollars prepared for souvenirs that had an O mint mark.
"The rolls of dollars were bagged and returned to the Seattle Federal Reserve branch vault. During the period from 1963 to 1964 these rolls were sent to banks in Idaho, Montana and Utah as normal currency in response to bank request.
"In 1964 and 1965 two technicians employed by the Boeing Company on the assembly and checkout of the Minuteman missile sites near Great Falls and Malstrom AFB became aware of the presence of the 1903-O Morgans hidden in Exhibit marked bank rolls in the banks of Montana. They and their wives obtained as many of these silver dollar rolls as they could, sorted out all of the Omintmarked dollars and rerolled the remainder for deposit and recirculation. These two couples took a number of vacations to many parts of the country, visited coin shops and sold their 1903-O Uncirculated dollars to pay their vacation expenses.
"One of the wives separated from her husbandand took a number of rolls of O mintmarked dollars with her to Seattle where she obtained employment as a clerk at the Boeing Company. Prior to leaving Seattle and moving back to the Midwest with her children she sought me out and sold me the remainder of what she and I believed were junk silver dollars. I took the balance of her plastic tubed rolls at the then current market value of $5 each or $100 per roll.
"I took the sack of rolls and put them in the truck of my car. It snowed the next morning and I left them in car trunk for ballast. In the spring of 1970 my wife asked me to clean my junk out of the car trunk and I took my bag of dollars into the house, and discovered that each plastic tubed roll contained Uncirculated Morgan silver dollars with a New Orleans mintmark. There were three rolls each of the following: 1898-O, 1899-O, 1900-O, 1901-O, 1902-O and 1904-O. I laid the dollars from each set of three rolls in order of quality and took the best two from each year for my son and myself for our collections. All of these were at least MS-63, some were MS-65 and a few were prooflike MS-63. The balance of my hoard found their way into local dealers and coin collector's hands by way of auctions at coin clubs and shows over the next few years.
"How many 1903-O Morgan dollars are out there in Mon-tana in dresser drawers and iron boxes will never be known. I am sure these two technicians didn't find all of the remainder from that bag. I suspect that they found about a hundred.
"Yours,
"[Signed]John Pancratz"