The law I'm referring to is when foreign coins were removed from circulation and were no longer legal tender. My question is did this law apply to U.S. Territories that hadn't reached statehood until later as well, such as Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, etc.? I have a Mexican Dollar (8-reale) dated 1863. I know Mexican coins were used extensively in the U.S. until 1857, but was wondering if they still may have been used in the Old West territories even after the law went in to effect for the states.
Well, the Utah Territory and the New Mexico Territory were both created in 1850, so I'd say yes the law applied there. But the Arizona Territory did not come along until 1858, so for a year or so the law would not have applied there. This map will show you what happened and when - (other than New Mexico and Arizona) And the Utah Territory included a whole lot more than what we call Utah today - But basically to answer your question the law applied as parts of the land became actual Territories. Before that, it didn't.
Great post Doug. One thing to remember also was it applied to what was lawful money. Nothing stopped anyone from using any coinage they liked, its just debt holders would not be forced to accept the foreign coins any longer. You walked into to a saloon with an 1863 large silver coin, I am pretty confident you could buy a drink or two post 1857 law or not.
So the coin I have could be considered a Wild West coin, and may have been used along side of Morgan dollars? It looks like the one below, but the one pictured is from Google.
As long as you remember the word"could" can also be part of "could not". If you were going to sell it, you might mislead some one into thinking erroneously. If you are just trying to imput information about it for informations sake, you would be all right. It all depends on your intent.
After the law was passed and the non-US coins ceased being legal tender there was still a shortage of small change in the western US and the Spanish colonial material almost certainly did continue to circulate However I doubt your large silver coin circulated alongside the Morgan dollar as they came along twenty years after the Act of 1857 and by that time the mints were doing a fairly good job of supplying coinage. Also huge quantities of US silver had come flooding back into the US in the early 1870's. There would not have been much need for the Mexican silver by the time of the Morgan dollars.
Interestingly, there was a panic and depression starting in 1857 and lasting until the Civil War. History books mention that Dred Scott made people think slaves might EVENTUALLY be freed and panic, "credit dried up," an 1846 tariff act suddenly began affecting business. Nowhere is the possibility explored that the huge amount of foreign coins in the people's hands suddenly NOT BEING LEGAL TENDER ANYMORE could have triggered a panic.
If you like the old west, I would buy circulated Morgans. Silver dollars historically were not popular on the east coast, but were used a lot in the old west. An old worn Morgan, especially an S or CC mint, would be the first coin I would choose if I had to pick a coin out of a lineup on which one was used in the old west. Second would be a worn $5 gold piece from about 1870-1890.
You'd be far better off buying a cent, dime, or quarter then. For they were used far more often in the old west than any Morgan ever made.
Of course sir, but my point was if a morgan is ciculated it would have a higher chance of having been circulated in the old west than the east coast, since they were used as coinage more in the west than the east. A cent was used throughout the country, and with population distributions of the era was much more likely to have been used in the east rather than the west. Well, at least the argument made sense in my head.....
OK, I understood that. And I should have left cents out. But with that S mint or CC mint dime or quarter you have a much better chance. The dollars were mainly stored in banks and didn't get used much. The dimes and quarters however, those were used all the time. And if they were S or CC, very few of them ever saw the east. Not back then. Yes, there's a chance with the dollars. But there is a much better chance with the dime and quarter. My only point.
Fair enough. So to OP unless you know where a coin was dug up, I agree with Doug to choose a circulated S or CC coin as your "Wild West" coins. I know the feeling you are going for. A lot of the attraction to me for ancients is the fact of when and where they were struck, what they were used and by whom. You like the idea a coin could have been used by a 49'er or a cowboy, I like the fact a coin was struck in Republican Rome, or in Rome after the empire fell, or ancient China, etc.
I was stationed in Montana in the early 60's and silver dollars were used commonly jn ordinary commerce then. If you gave a cashier a dollar bill, he or she would usually put in under the bill trays with the chacks and stuff rather than the dollar bill tray. The dollar bill tray was filled with silver dollars, usually Morgans. And most were usually in pretty good shape, too! This was common practice until 1965, when the entire silver dollar population disappeared over night! To this day I am annoyed at the idea of buying a Morgan dollar. Read more: http://www.cointalk.com/t195391/#ixzz1ehWBV1cz
Something strange and terrible went wrong with my last transmission! I must have hit either "Cntrl" or "Alt" keys by mistake. I can't seem to erase my typos.
