1859 $1 MS64+ 认证号25596541, PCGS号6946

Charles Morgan

The 1859 Liberty Seated Dollar

By 1859, silver mines in Arizona were fully operational, shipping metal both east and west. This was also the year the Comstock Lode was discovered, sparking a massive rush of miners to the Utah Territory (modern-day Nevada).

The Philadelphia Mint did not strike silver dollars for circulation in 1858, but resumed production in 1859 with a robust output of 256,500 coins. The majority of this mintage was earmarked for export, paid out to merchants for the burgeoning trade with India and China. It is also highly probable that a portion of the mintage remaining in America was sent to the melting pot at the outset of the Civil War. In 1861, the Mint repurposed tens of thousands of silver dollars into subsidiary coins to meet the desperate wartime demand for small change. This mass conversion was intended to address a critical shortage as hoarding became rampant and silver began to vanish from domestic commerce. It wasn't enough.

Business strike production for the 1859 Liberty Seated Dollar (#6946) commenced on April 18 and concluded on December 10. The mintage was released in 13 deliveries, the majority occurring in October.

U.S. Mint die records indicate that three obverse and five reverse dies were prepared, though it appears that perhaps only four die marriages were used.  In addition to the business strikes, the Philadelphia Mint produced 800 Proof strikings (#7002) for collectors.

The attrition rate for business strikes is considerably higher than that of Proofs. While Proofs graded PCGS PR65 and above number over twenty, Mint State business strikes at PCGS MS65 or better number only two. Today, examples in About Uncirculated (AU) condition typically command prices of $2,000 and up. This is remarkably affordable for such a scarce issue and serves as a prime example of why you coin's rarity cannot be judges solely by its mintage figures.

Liberty Seated Dollar Collecting in the Mid-19th Century

To gain a better historical perspective on the domestic circulation and scarcity of these coins, one needs to look no further than the published remarks of Montroville Wilson Dickeson, M.D. (1810–1882). Dickeson was a Philadelphia-born physician, archaeologist, and "founding father" of American numismatics. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania (1828), he spent years excavating (a polite euphemism for "grave robbing") over 1,000 Native American burial mounds, amassing a collection of 40,000 artifacts.

In 1859, he published The American Numismatical Manual of the Currency of Money of the Aborigines, and Colonial, State, and United States Coins with Historical and Descriptive Notices of Each Coin or Series, the first widely available reference to treat U.S. coinage—including gold—as a serious field of study. While the manual contained significant errors regarding rare early gold issues and the 1848 "CAL" Quarter Eagle (#7749), it remained the standard text for decades. In this book, Dickeson established a rarity index for all U.S. coin issues by date (not mintmark) from 1793 to 1858.

Dickeson’s most notable error was labeling the 1846 issue as "Rare" when, in reality, it is one of the most readily available "No Motto" Liberty Seated Dollars today. Given that Dickeson’s frame of reference was the Mint’s home city of Philadelphia, these coins were likely distributed in other regions.

Conversely, it is impressive that just seven or eight years after their production, Dickeson recognized the extreme rarity of the 1851 and 1852 issues. These remain among the greatest rarities in the series; in an absolute sense, only the legendary 1870-S Liberty Seated Dollar (#6965) is more ellusive.

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