I was wondering how you would identify a 1794 dateless flowing hair silver dollar I was looking at many samples of the 1794 dollar and in lower grades many don't have the date When looking at the price of a 1794 and 1795 in G4 is a $50,000 dollar gap. I was wondering is there a way to identify a dateless flowing hair as a 1794? Similar to a dateless 1916 SLQ I looked online and haven't found anything All responses appreciated
Is there a way? Absolutely. In those days, there were subtle but noticeable differences between every die. Do I know how? No, but if you have a reference book on early dollars, it will go into die characteristics and give you diagnostics.
This isn' a series I collect (as if I could afford to!) but maybe this will help. Only one die pair was used for 1794. So there are no varieties. Most have adjustment marks on one or both sides. One (or more?) has a central "plug" on the obverse...silver added before striking in order to bring the weight up to tolerance. Many have significant weakness on the left obverse and left reverse due to dies that shifted (i.e., no longer parallel). A flowing hair dollar can only be 1794 or 1795. After that the Mint released draped hair dollars. If the dateless dollar is clearly a flowing hair, and has three leaves on the branch directly under eagles's wings then it is a 1795. If there are two leaves it could be a 1794 or 1795. The best source of information on the 1794 dollar is probably "The Flowing Hair Silver Dollars of 1794 - An Historical and Population Census Study" by Martin A. Logies. Walter Breen's encyclopedia is probably very useful too. Lance.
I don't have pictures of all the 1795's here with me, but this works for all the ones I've compared so far. On the 1794 the terminal leaves of the two branches of the wreath appear to touch each other at the points and the space between them is well right of the second S in STATES. The point of the next outer leaf on the left branch is below the center of the S One all the 95's I've checked so far the space between the branches is either below the S or just right of it, and the next outer leaf is below the E in STATES. Reverse of the 1794
That's interesting, Conder, and I see it is so. Looking over some 1795's (both 2 and 3 lower leaf varieties) it appears that the left terminal wreath always has just one leaf at its end, not two like the 1794. That seems even easier, if it's reliable. Lance.
I think your correct, I also noticed that on the observe the right stars are positioned oddly and unevenly when compared to the 1795, look at the inner points of the stars. BTW I asked since I've been buying $1000 face bags of cull dollars, picking out keys and flipping ins all batches since my freshman year of college. I've saved all the bust and flowing hair Ice found so I was considering looking through the flowing hair to identify a 94. Long shot I know, but all of them are correct dimensions and weight, so there is a very slim chance.
