Q. David Bowers
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: $0.823
Dies prepared: Obverse: 89; Reverse: 88
Business strike mintage: 17,785,000;1 Delivery fig-ures by month: January: 985,000; February: 900,000; March: 1,300,000; April: 1,400,000; May: 1,400,000; June: 1,400,000; July: 1,800,000; August: 1,800,000; September: 1,700,000; October: 1,700,000; November: 1,700,000; December: 1,700,000.
Estimated quantity melted: Millions, probably under the 1918 Pittman Act. Many were destroyed in private melts the late 1970s as well.
Approximate population MS-65 or better: 40,000 to 65,000 (URS-17)
Approximate population MS-64: 160,000 to 250,000 (URS-19)
Approximate population MS-63: 265,000 to 450,000 (URS-20)
Approximate population MS-60 to 62: 600,000 to 1,200,000 (URS-21)
Approximate population G-4 to AU-58: 1,300,000 to 2,000,000 (URS-22)
Availability of prooflike coins: PL and DMPL coins are plentiful. Most have nicely frosted devices set against mirror fields.
Characteristics of striking: Above average.
Known hoards of Mint State coins: Many were re-leased by the Treasury in December 1954 as part of the annual Christmas season dispersals; additional quantities were released later in the same decade, plus some in 1962-1964.
Proofs:
Dies prepared: Obverse: 2; Reverse: 1
Proof mintage: 930; Delivery figures by month:
January: 200; February: none; March: 200; April: none; May: none; June: 150; July: none; August: none; September: 50; October: none; November: none; December: 330.
Approximate population Proof-65 or better: 94+/- (URS-8)
Approximate population Proof-64: 108+/- (URS-8)
Approximate population Proof-63: 103+/- (URS-8)
Approximate population Proof-60 to 62: 215+/- (URS-9)
Commentary
The 1885 is one of the most plentiful of all early Morgan dollars and is readily obtainable in grades up to and including MS-65.
Distribution of Dollars
The Annual Report of the Director of the Mint, for the fiscal year dated 1885 told of the distribution of silver dollars as of June 30, 1885. The Philadelphia Mint had 10,834,807 coins on hand and had transferred or distributed 11,336,977 during the preceding fiscal year. The San Francisco Mint had 32,029,467 coins on hand and had distributed 3,516,033; Carson City had 3,170,308 on hand and had distributed 326,976; New Orleans had 16,221,999 on hand and had distributed 5,193,639.
It is evident that dollars were piling up in storage at the branch mints. Carson City had distributed only 10.3% of its holdings, San Francisco only 10.09%.
Bulging Vaults
In the Annual Report of the Director of the Mint, 1885, the director complained about overuse of storage facilities to house silver dollars, noting in part the following:
"The mints of the United States were never designed to be repositories either of large stocks of bullion or of coin. This is indicated by the small capacity and number of their original vaults. The best of these in the Mint at Philadelphia are very primitive in design and in safety appliances. Indeed, all of the institutions, as far as I am informed, with the exception of the Mint at San Francisco, are supplied with vaults the security of which mainly depends upon the integrity and efficiency of guards and patrols by night, and upon the presence of officers and employees by day.
"But, as a matter of fact, still further dependence is placed on the legal preservation of public order and the efficiency of local police. Confidence in such personal, as distinguished from structural, means of security seems happily to have suffered no relax from serious disturbances of public order. Yet it may well be asked should even this long immunity from popular violence be accepted as a guaranty against the possibility of any future occurrence of the kind in large cities like New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans? Or should indeed such immunity in the past serve as a justification on the part of the government for not exhausting all practicable structural means for the safe custody in the mints not only of their regular store, but also of coin, for which the Treasury and Subtreasuries at present offer but a scant asylum?
"The demand upon the mints for facilities for the storage and safe custody of bullion and coin becomes more and more urgent as their available capacity becomes taxed through the accumulation, especially of coin, of which the Treasury and Sub-treasuries of the United States are unable to relieve these institutions, through similar exigencies on their own part, or through considerations of expense attending every movement of specie.'
"The lack of ample security at the mints under the necessity of makeshifts to provide even a tolerably safe storage, becomes a source of great anxiety to the officers in charge, the requirements of whose original trusts are' seen to be greatly exceeded by the additional responsibility as custodians of vast sums of public moneys. When, too, it is remembered that the vaults provisionally arranged to meet the present emergency for the storage of coin are far from what they should be as such repositories, the accountability of the officers in the mints becomes one which in strict justice should not be imposed. Some of the provisional vaults, which I have personally examined, in the most active mint in the country [Philadelphia], are scarcely more than closets or ordinary cellars opening into workshops, thoroughfares, and dark recesses, and depending more on neighboring traffic for security than on any security of their own. *
"[FOOTNOTE *Since this report was put in press Super-intendent [Daniel M.] Fox has reported that the only vault in the Mint with a combination lock was on the 21st of October filled to repletion with coin consisting mainly of standard silver dollars, even to filling up its passages.]
"Relief, however, was' then daily expected from the completion of the work of preparing for the reception of silver specie-two empty vaults connecting with the vacant apartments originally designed for occupation by the Sub-treasury at Philadelphia in the new United States (Post-Office) building of that city. At the instance of the Department these vaults have been supplied with time-locks and metallic lattice work, and consigned to use by the superintendent of the Mint at Philadelphia for the storage of silver coins, in excess of what can be kept at the Mint, and the delivery of which to the Trea-sury or Sub-treasury has not yet been called for.
"The anomaly is thus presented that, after passing out of its immediate custody, beyond the walls of the Mint, the output of the Mint must, for some time to come, remain in the care of that institution. As no other appropriation is available, the expense of police and watch will have to be defrayed out of the regular appropriations of the Mint at Philadelphia, the cost of transportation only between the Mint and the vaults referred to being payable out of the Silver Profit Fund."
Director Burchard added that silver dollars were put up 1,000 coins each in 8-ounce duck-cloth bags. To store one million dollars face value worth required 250 cubic feet. On the other hand, to store one million dollars of other silver coinage (half dollars and smaller denominations) took 150 cubic feet, and to store one million dollars worth of gold coins, in $5,000 groups in 8-ounce duck bags, it took "nearly 17 cubic feet."
Further:
"The space occupied by a bag of standard silver dollars, piled snugly in mass, is 12 inches long, 9 wide, and 4 deep. Small silver (subsidiary) packs better than dollars. The weight of a thousanddollars in subsidiary silver being 56 ounces less than that of an equal value in standard silver dollars, the spaces occupied by each vary but little from each other."