Mirror Surface Morgan Dollars by Randy Campbell
"In 1958, I plucked a nice 1934S Peace dollar out of the change drawer at my Dad's business. Occasionally, a Morgan dollar would find its way into the register. The size and the beauty of these large silver coins captivated me!
In 1960, I attended my first coin show in Miami. A coin dealer from Boynton Beach had hired me to work for him because, as he put it, "you have a knack for coins!" At that show, I saw one entire showcase filled with hundreds of 1928 Peace dollars brought to America by Cuban refugees, many of whom had worked at the Havana casinos that had just been closed by Fidel Castro.
Another dealer at that coin show had two showcases of Morgan dollars. One had frosty surface dollars. The other one had mirror surface dollars ------ hundreds of them! "I can get an extra five or ten cents more for these mirror dollars", he bragged! For the princely sum of $1.15, I walked away from his table with an amazing deep mirror 1879S dollar. "You paid too much", said the dealer who had hired me. No matter, at age 13, 1 was hooked on prooflike dollars."
Proof-like Morgan Dollars What's a DMPL ?
"In his Feb. 14, 1994, installment of his Coin World column, "Grading Insights," Randy Campbell, an authenticator-grader with ANACS, explained that prooflike and deep-mirror prooflike coins are highly sought after by collectors because of the low number of coins exhibiting those characteristics in comparison to the number of coins struck at the various U.S. Mint coin production facilities."
"Campbell concluded that less than 2 percent of all surviving Mint State Morgan dollars display enough depth of mirrors to qualify as prooflike."
"Campbell recently said his statements in his 1994 column still hold true, as do his comments in the other publications from the 1980s and 1990s cited here."
DMPL
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Morgan Dollar Reverses
"The Morgan Dollar, known by its designer, George T. Morgan, was minted from 1878 to 1904, and then again in 1921. In that time four major reverse styles were adopted, and the table below illustrates differences between these styles. These reverses appear as types A, B, C and D in Van Allen and Mallis' Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan & Peace Dollars, with substyles denoted numerically, and that is also the notation used here."
Morgan Dollar Reverses
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George Morgan and his Dollar by R.W. Julian
"The Morgan dollar is perhaps the most widely publicized coin in the United States. There are many who collect it as an investment while others simply appreciate the coin itself. Yet there are very few collectors who know the background to the first issue in 1878.
Prior to 1849, gold and silver coinage in this country had existed in a fairly stable alliance. The California gold rush of 1849 upset this by introducing great coinages of gold to the marketplace; silver coins were now undervalued and many were melted or exported."
George Morgan and his Dollar
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1878-1921 SILVER DOLLAR MORGAN
"Political pressure, not public demand, brought the Morgan dollar into being. There was no real need for a new silver dollar in the late 1870s; the last previous "cartwheel," the Liberty Seated dollar, had been legislated out of existence in 1873, and hardly anyone missed it.
Silver-mining interests did miss the dollar, though, and lobbied Congress forcefully for its return. The Comstock Lode in Nevada was yielding huge quantities of silver, with ore worth $36 million being extracted annually. After several futile attempts, the silver forces in Congress led by Representative Richard ("Silver Dick") Bland of Missouri finally succeeded in winning authorization for a new silver dollar when Congress passed the Bland-Allison Act on February 28, 1878. This Act required the Treasury to purchase at market levels between two million and four million troy ounces of silver bullion every month to be coined into dollars. This amounted to a massive subsidy, coming at a time when the dollar's face value exceeded its intrinsic worth by nearly 10%."
The Morgan Silver Dollar
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Morgan Silver Dollars 1878-1921 by Q. David Bowers
"If Morgan dollars, minted from 1878 to 1921, didn't exist, and a committee of coin collectors was put together to create a "dream series," they could do no better than envision what collectors now have in front them in actuality -- a fascinating series containing approximately 100 major varieties, most of which are over a century old, and the majority of which are available in Mint State for less than $100 each!"
Morgan Dollars - Bowers
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Grading Morgan Dollars
This site offers side by side pics of Morgan dollars graded and slabbed by one of the better grading companies. It includes examples in the circulated and MS grades up to MS68. While this certainly isn't the be all, end all for grading Morgan dollars it does offer enough information for those wishing to learn the basics.
Grading Morgan Dollars
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The Top 100 Morgan Dollar Varieties
Plain and simple, this is a list of the top 100 varieties by date & mint mark along with a brief description. For more detailed information look for the various VAM links in the
Variety & Errors thread. Top 100
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