Do Peace Dollars have the same amount of silver as Morgan Dollars?

Don't bet on it or hold your breath, etc. Still trying to buy a couple of of the 2021-W ASE proofs, but everytime the mint's "reminder" email arrives (several times in this last week) telling me they are "now available"...and I jump on it immediately...they are "no longer available." I did get a hit when a pre-selected quantity of 8 somehow came up at check-out, but when I went to change it to two, they were "no longer available." (I could have bought 8, but not one or two...way to treat customers). Not sure how some get their foot/feet in the mint's door...some sort of pre-purchase or registration/something...but I haven't found it or how it works...too old, slow and tech-challenged, I guess. That said, have heard many similar stories from others, so don't feel alone.

 

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How did our silver coins come to end up with 0.77344 ounces of silver ?

I know for Saints, at $20.67/oz. and the coin was a double eagle so it comes out to .9675 ounces of gold.

How did the silver number come about ?

 

Good question! The (standard) Red Book is a bit confusing on this subject. A fineness of 412-1/2 grains of 90% fine silver was established as the standard weight for a silver dollar in 1837. Production of silver dollars ceased in 1873 and did not resume until authorized by the Bland-Allison Act of 1878.

However, I can't tell how 412-1/2 grains of 90% fine silver relates to the weight of .77344 ounces. Maybe someone else knows.

 

I found this interesting while looking at the weight of silver dollars from every US series since 1794. There is a slight difference in the Flowing Hair, Draped Bust and Trade Dollar. Seated, Morgans and Peace are the same weight with the exception of the Morgan 1878 8TF, which is the same weight as the Trade Dollar and heavier than the Flowing Hair and Draped Bust. All have the same percentage of Silver (90%) and tin (10%).

Flowing Hair - 27.00 grams
Draped Bust - 27.00 grams
Seated Liberty - 26.73 grams
Trade Dollar - 27.20 grams
Morgan 8TF - 27.20 grams
Morgan - 26.73 grams
Peace - 26.73 grams

 

The 1878 8TF Morgan weighs more than all other Morgans? That can't possibly be right... can it?

 

It must be due to the extra feather.

 

So, how does this work? (from the Mint's release) "The Mint’s intent is to use the .999 fine silver planchets that they strike for commemorative dollars as those will produce coins to the same weight, thickness and diameter of the original dollars."

But if the original dollars were 90% silver not 99.9, how can they get the same physical dimensions as the original? I could see if it were the opposite because you would have 10% to come up with a proper blend of metals to make it 'add up'. Or is it blind luck that the 10% not silver in the original matched the physical characteristics of the 90% that was?

 

I whipped out my trusty VAM Bible, and the closest reference to .77344 I found was on Page 25:
"Under the Bland-Allison Act, 291,272,018.56 fine ounces of silver were purchased at a cost of $308,279,260.71. This bullion was coined into 378,166,793 silver dollars (the standard silver dollar contains 0.77 ounces of pure silver)."

However, this still does not explain why the Liberty Seated Dollar, 1840-1873, also contained .77344 ounces of pure silver.

 

*** speculation*** Maybe it was originally figured out chemically (in moles) and when brought into layman's terms (oz.), that's what the value just happened to be. ***speculation***

 

Rounding error ?

It's 3/1000's of an ounce.

 

Much though I'd love to think that, I'm pretty sure it would've been driven more by the various foreign silver coins that were already circulating.

 

You know, I came really close to ending my post with "one extra feather wouldn't add that much more weight..."

 

REKT!

 

I was able to get a V75 ASE proof but I didn’t know the 2021 ASE proofs were even going on sale or when so I didn’t even get to try.

 

LOL my friend LOL

 

Yep, I saw that, too. And, as we all know, if a company posted it on the Internet, it can't POSSIBLY be wrong.



First I'd ever heard of a VAM with a different weight...

 

Also:



I don't think I actually own one that I could weigh, but this looks to me like a case where someone fat-fingered a weight when typing an entry for an "authoritative source" and it's been copied all over. (Might be some interesting tracing to be done there.)

But I feel like if there's one Morgan variety with a different weight from all the others, that would be more widely recognized and publicized. Half a gram is a significant variation.

 

For starters there are errors in your assumptions and in the table. First they did NOT all fave the same percentage of silver. The flowing hair and draped bust dollars were .8924 fine not .900 so to make them have the proper amount of silver in them the weight was higher 416 grains. When the .900 fineness became standard in 1837 that reduced the weight to 412 1/2 grains. The 8 TF Morgan was the same weight as all the other Morgans (412 1/2 grains), not the same as the Trade Dollar (420 grains).

And the .900 fine silver was alloyed with copper not tin.

The dollar weighs 412.5 grains of .900 fine silver. 412.5 times .9 = 371.25 grains of pure silver = .77344 troy oz.

As for how we got that weight, the most common silver coin in the colonies and the early US was the Spanish milled dollar or 8 Reales. We wished our dollar to trade on par with that coin. So several milled dollars were assayed to determine an average silver content and the result was 371.25 grains of pure silver per dollar so that was adopted for the definition of what a dollar was. And since at the time the silver/gold ratio was believed to be 15 to one the gold dollar was defined as 24.75 grains of pure gold. A few years later it was realized the market silver/gold ratio was actually 15.98 to 1 and the gold dollar definition was changed to 23.22 grains of pure gold. This reduced the weight of the gold coinage. Those official definitions have remained ever since.

It is also why the double eagle weighs what it does. 23.22 grains per dollar times 20 dollars = 464.4 grains of pure gold divided by the fineness of .900 = 516 grains of standard gold alloy.