The 1895 Morgan Silver Dollar is often referred to as the “King of the Morgan Dollars”. It is called this because it is the most valuable and most difficult to find of the whole Morgan Dollar Collection. Although 12,880 Morgan Silver Dollars were produced in 1895 (12,000 being regular strikes and 880 being proof coins), only 75 to 80 of them have been discovered, and only three of those were regularly struck coins. If marked as a PF-68, this coin could sell for more than $120,000 at auction.
Numismatic scholars possess different thoughts on how the 12,000 regular struck 1895 Morgan Dollars have simply disappeared. Some suggest that during a shipwreck, the coins were lost. While most feel that the coins were never even produced, others believe that they were minted, but then remelted for a variety of reasons.
A man named George T. Morgan designed the Morgan Dollar, hence giving it its name. The actual title of the coin was to be called by was the “Liberty Head” Dollar. Because it had a scrawny look and a strangely shaped head, the eagle was looked down upon as very ugly. When first put into circulation, the Morgan Dollar got a lot of disapproval and was frequently referred to as the “Buzzard Dollar”. Due to its heaviness and large size, it was also called a “Cartwheel”. Because of their unpopularity, the U.S. Government let the Morgan Silver Dollars sit in a vault for many years. As the years went by, hundreds of millions of them were melted back down, while some, such as the 12,000 1895 Morgan Dollars, remained unknown about.
When huge sums of silver were recovered in the Comstock Lode located in Nevada, a lobbying group formed by mine owners, led by Congressman Richard Bland, attempted to make the U.S. Mint purchase this silver from them. When Congress admitted the Bland-Allison Act in the February of 1878, the U.S. Treasury was required to buy 2 to 4 million troy ounces of silver per month from the Comstock Lode. As a result of this, over half a billion Morgan Silver Dollars were produced from 1878 to 1904.
Some coin dealers realized around 1960 that the U.S. Treasury was swapping Morgan Dollars for Silver Certificates. Although most people sought after the Morgans for their silver bullion value, some realized the possible value of 60 to 80 year old coins to collectors. When only 2.9 million Silver Dollars were left, in 1964, the Treasury put an end to this trading. Starting in 1972 and ending in 1980, the GSA sold the rest of the coins through public mail-bid auctions. Morgan Dollars began gaining popularity in 1975, when Nevada miser, LaVere Redfield’s basement was found to have contained 400,000 Morgan Silver Dollars after his death.
Collectors later found out that they needed more than one coin from each year to complete the Morgan Dollar Series. This is because the “Comprehensive Catalog of Peace and Morgan Silver Dollars” (a.k.a. the VAM book) by Leroy Van Allen and George Mallis recorded all identified of the coin’s variations.
US $105.00
![C2442] 1902-O MORGAN SILVER DOLLAR NGC MS64](http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/pict/310211855446_0.jpg "The 1902 Morgan Silver Dollar")
