Silver Dollars & Trade Dollars of the United States - A Complete Encyclopedia

1881 Morgan: Market Values

1881 Morgan: Summary of Characteristics

Business Strikes:
Enabling legislation: As earlier, plus Act of February 28, 1878
Designer: George T. Morgan
Weight and composition: 412.5 grains; .900 silver, .100 copper
Melt-down (silver value) in year minted: $0.S7575
Dies prepared: Obverse: 57; Reverse: 45
Business strike mintage: 9,163,000
Estimated quantity melted: Probably millions under the 1915 Pittman Act and later legislation.
Approximate population MS-65 or better: 2,500 to 4,000 (URS-13)
Approximate population MS-64: 20,000 to 30,000 (URS-16)
Approximate population MS-63: 50,000 to 80,000 (URS-17)
Approximate population MS-60 to 62: 100,000 to 200,000 (URS-18)
Approximate population G-4 to AU-58: 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 (URS-22)
Availability of prooflike coins: Semi-prooflike and prooflike coins are scarce; DMPL pieces are scarcer yet. Prooflike and DMPL coins in higher grades are especially elusive. Prooflike coins are sometimes flat at the centers.
Characteristics of striking: Striking varies from sharp to weak, but many sharp pieces are in numismatic hands.
Known hoards of Mint State coins: Millions were released by the Treasury Department in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Proofs:
Dies prepared: Obverse: 2; Reverse: 2 (of which one die was also used in 1882)
Proof mintage: 984
Approximate population Proof-65 or better: 90+/- (URS-8)
Approximate population Proof-64: 122+/- (URS-S)
Approximate population Proof-63: 108+/- (URS-8)
Approximate population Proof-60 to 62: 250+/- (URS-10)

Commentary
Business strike 1881 Morgan dollars are very common in lower Mint State levels. Position of final 1 varies as in 1880, suggesting a three-digit logotype.

Dollars Stored at the Philadelphia Mint
The Annual Report of the Director of the Mint, 1881, noted that on hand at the Philadelphia Mint on June 30, 1881 were 1,250,802 silver dollars. 9,739,095 had been distributed by this date. The quantity in storage included $1 million worth of silver dollars transferred during the year from the TreasuryDepartment. As years went by, the quantity of dollars stored would grow to unmanageable proportions.

Reputation of the Mint
Dealer S.K. Harzfeld printed the following under Lot 1081a of his sale of January 24-25, 1881. At the time, many collectorsand dealers were complaining of favorable treatment given to insiders with connections to the Mint.

"Lot 1081a: 1880 Half Dollar, Quarter, Dime. Uncirc., bright. 3 pieces.

"The Superintendent of the U.S. Mint, Colonel A.L. Snowden, has authorized me to state, that he will furnish on application, to every bona fide collector, two sets of these

Uncirculated coins, at face value. As was done in 1879, specu-lators (not the legitimate coin dealers) tried to secure these coins and to sell them at fancy prices, claiming that only 100 sets were struck. Colonel Snowden, however, stopped at once the sale to these speculators, and had a sufficient number struck ($1,000 worth of each denomination) to supply all bona fide collectors. It is particularly just on my part, to state that Superintendent Snowden shows an earnest effort to suppress the abuses and acts of favoritism I complained of, and to assist the legitimate efforts of legitimate Coin Dealers. I regret that I cannot say the same of the Director ofthe Mint. Notwithstanding all demonstrances, and the resolution passed by the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, the name of whose President-the venerable Eli K. Price-should alone be sufficient to secure respectful consideration on the part of a 'public servant,' at the hour of writing, the Director has ordered the 150 Goloid Metric Sets, still at the Mint, to be forwarded to Washington, 'subject to the order of the Coinage Committee.' In other words, we may again have to apply for those sets to some speculator, or some political bummer, or to people who are neither 'the wives, the sisters, the cousins, or the aunts' of congressmen. There cer-tainly seems to be room here for the operation of the advocates of 'Civil Service Reform. "

Silver Dollar Buying Prices

In 1881 A.M. Smith published An Illustrated History of the U.S. Mint, which gave these buying prices for silver dollars:

1804 $500; 1794, 1838, 1839, 1851, and 1852 each $20; 1858 $10; 1798 Small Eagle reverse, with 15 obverse stars, $6; 1798 With Small Eagle reverse $3; 1836 Gobrecht $3.50; 1799 With 5 Stars Facing $2; 1854, 1855, 1856 $2 each; 1795, 1796, 1797,1801,1802 and 1803 $1.50 each.

  An 1881 Commentary

The following is from Mason's Coin Collectors' Herald, Sep-tember 1881, the subtleties of which, undoubtedly, were more appreciated in 1881 than now:

"THE BLAND DOLLAR. Another Mystery Comes to a 'Head.'

"The extraordinary ability exhibited by the proprietors and managers of the Philadelphia Public Record, in diving under the surface of things to get at bottom facts, has placed this daily newspaper in the front rank of American journals, and giving it a position side by side with such papers as the N. Y. Herald, London Times, etc. This time the Record has turned up a dollar and it came down head, and the dollar is a Bland dollar, and the head is a facsimile of the living, breathing, beautiful head of Miss Anna W. Williams, who resides at number 1023 Spring Garden Street, this city.

"Well, we are trapped this time, sure as shootin'. To think how we have derided the bust of Liberty on the 'Bland Dollar,' as of French origin, and wondered why Morgan should have delved so long among the 'five franc pieces' of the French Republic to find a suitable 'Head of Liberty' to adorn the front side of our disreputable dollars. Oh, ain't we ashamed of our position, and anxious to bow in humble penitence before the artist, Morgan, the belle, Williams, and ask to be forgiven and forgotten. Oh, Anna, preserve your single uprightness, and your doubly blessed maidenhood. Don't swing yourself into the matrimonial noose, for in that case your beloved partner might object to everybody carrying around in his trousers pocket a likeness of sweet Anna, in the shape of a 'Bland Dollar.'

The Year 1881 in History
President James Garfield said: "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is master of all its legislation and commerce." On July 2, 1881, Garfield was mortally wounded by a gunshot from a rejected office-seeker, Charles J. Guiteau, and on September 19th he died. Succeeding him in office was his viece president, Chester Alan Arthur. The Supreme Court ruled the Federal Income Tax Law of 1862 unconstitutional. The American National Red Cross was founded by Clara Barton in Washington, D.C.
The Wharton School of Finance was established at the University of Pennsylvania by a gift from nickel baron Joseph Wharton, who for years had been the sole United States refiner of nickel (and a close friend of politicians and Mint interests). The Barnum & Bailey Circus was created by a merger between Phineas T. Barnum's traveling show and that of John Anthony Bailey. Circuses were big businesses in the United States, and usually traveled from city to city in special railroad cars.

Earlier-minted silver coins were still abundant in circulation and in Treasury vaults. Thus, relatively few new dimes, quarters, and half dollars were struck. At the Philadelphia Mint, a new Liberty Head design was created, which eventually was used on the 1883 Liberty Head nickel. The gold dollar was by now an anachronism and was rarely seen in commerce. However, a popular speculation in gold dollars had been going on since 1879, and quantities were hoarded by coin collectors and investors.