MORE ON THE SILVER DOLLARS OF 1895

Mr. DeLorey’s 1995 article focuses on an article by Henry T. Hettger that originally appeared in the May/June 1994 issue of Bowers & Merena Galleries’ Rare Coin Review.

In the meantime, some additional research has been done on the 1895 silver dollars: in 2006, noted numismatic researcher Roger W. Burdette published an article in Coin Values, the short-lived glossy magazine supplement to Coin World. (I wish I could tell you exactly when the article appeared, but I only have the pages I removed from the magazine, which don’t have the typical date “footer.” The article begins on page 46 of the issue and there’s an advertisement for Whitman’s Oct. 5-7, 2006 Atlanta coin show on page 49.)

Mr. Burdette’s article begins by acknowledging Mr. Hettger’s article and then discusses Proof coins and the circumstances under which the Philadelphia Mint’s stockpile of silver dollars was inventoried twice during 1894 and 1895. Next, he discusses the Mint’s accounting processes and the circumstances under which 12,000 silver dollars were struck in June 1895.

The article includes a very clear image of the monthly summary page (retrieved from the National Archives) that shows the coins produced at the Philadelphia Mint in 1895, including 12,880 silver dollars. The dollars were produced in March (290), May (180), June (12,000), September (90) and December (320).

Mr. Burdette then discusses the role of the Assay Commission that met on February 14, 1896 to examine the coinage of 1895. He reports that the Commission examined ten 1895 silver dollars at that meeting (from the March, May, June, September and December deliveries).

For those who are not aware, Mr. Burdette has retrieved and made available the records of the annual Assay Commission from 1800 to 1943. They are available as a 4-DVD set from Wizard Coin Supply.

To my mind, unless one wishes to advocate for a fairly complex chain of cover-ups, Mr. Burdette makes a very convincing argument that 12,880 silver dollars were produced in 1895, at least 12,000 of them were placed into storage and, most likely, melted during the 1918 Pittman melt.

Of course, this summary of Mr. Burdette’s article is brief and incomplete and intended to encourage those who are interested to seek out and read the complete article, which should be more widely known than it apparently is.

Mr. Burdette also introduces a very interesting wrinkle: the 1895-dated silver dollar dies that were available to strike the coins. He reports that no silver dollar dies were produced for circulation-strike coins, but that five obverse and four reverse dies were produced for Proof coinage.

At this, those interested in searching for any of the 12,000 “circulation-strike” coins must want to pull out their hair. We know that Proof coins of the time were struck on the Mint’s medal press under greater-than-normal striking pressure, using polished dies and carefully selected and prepared planchets. Presumably, the 12,000 1895 circulation strike coins were struck on a production press, but did the Mint use new dies or dies that had already struck Proof coins? If the dies were different, had they been polished? If one could have told the difference between a Proof coin and a circulation strike coin struck by the same dies immediately after the coins had been manufactured, would one still be able to distinguish the two after some circulation?

At this point, I will leave it to the Morgan Dollar specialists to answer these questions!

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
THE PHANTOM SILVER DOLLARS OF 1895 (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v18n16a30.html)

To read Tom's complete article, see:
The Phantom Dollars Of 1895 (www.hjbltd.com/departments/articles/details.asp?inventorynumber=57&linenum=25)

To order Burdette's Assay Commission DVD, see:
Annual Assay Commission: United States Mint 1800-1943 (www.wizardcoinsupply.com/annual-assay-commission-united-states-mint-1800-1943.html)

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