1962 Seattle World's Fair - Million Silver Dollars Exhibit - Slabbed Dollars Query

At the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle there was a phenomenal exhibit called the "Million Silver Dollars" display. It was literally one million Morgan and Peace silver dollars in one massive pile. According to what I have read, visitors to the fair were able to purchase a silver dollar from the display encased in a nifty World's Fair holder.

So here is my question: Has anyone on CT ever run across a Morgan or Peace Dollar in a 1962 Seattle World's Fair holder? I checked eBay but found nothing. Google also came up empty - yet clearly these slabbed coins did exist and the public was able to purchase them. Surely not all of them disappeared. You'd think that most would be retained as a souvenir of both the fair and this unique exhibit.

I would very much like to find and purchase one of these dollars if I can find one in the original holder. You see, I was born six days after the fair opened, so it would be fun to add something like this to my birth year set. It also appeals to me because I am both a numismatist and a collector of world's fair memorabilia.

So, has anyone ever run across one of these or, better still, does anyone know where I might purchase one?

 

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http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v13n50a19.html

http://www.cointalk.com/t39326/

 

One small correction - it appears that the coins were not sold at the fair. Only one person received coins from the pile at the fair - a lady who was the 1,000,000th visitor was given 100 silver dollars from the pile. (Wouldn't y'all like to have that stash!?) Anyway, it looks like the dollars were sold to the public after the World's Fair Closed - which kinda makes sense since it would no longer be a million dollars to look at if they sold them as the fair went along. Here's the text I found:


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0diggsdigg A Million Silver Dollars Posted On 02/03/2010 10:19:25 by CollectibleAmerica by Steve Wolff The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair offered its ten million visitors many exciting sights. Astronaut John Glenn brought his Friendship 7 space capsule, Elvis Presley even filmed a movie there, and Seattle’s famous Space Needle was built as the fair’s futuristic symbol. However, if you had purchased your ticket and walked on the fairgrounds in the spring of 1962, you would have been treated to a spectacular display which has never been re-created: a wire corn crib holding 1 MILLION gleaming US Silver Dollars! This incredible display was the result of an unlikely partnership between the Philadelphia Mint and three Washington numismatists. The three convinced a Columbus, Nebraska manufacturing company to build a steel building on the fair site, while two large semi trucks each carried 500,000 silver dollars in mint-sealed bags from Philadelphia all the way across country to Seattle. (Of course, the trucks also carried armed Pinkerton guards, while state troopers and local police provided additional escort.) To construct the Million Silver Dollars exhibit, 800,000 Morgan silver dollars in mint bags dated 1910-1915 were carefully stacked in the center of the aforementioned corn crib. Then, once the mountain of bags was completed, the final 200,000 Peace dollars were poured in to completely cover the bags. Fair visitors were allowed to pass within just a few feet of this amazing display from the Fair’s opening day, April 2 1, 1962, until it closed in October. Anywhere from 25,000 – 40,000 visitors passed through the steel building every day to gaze upon this once-in-a-lifetime sight. While most visitors considered themselves lucky to even be close to this treasure, one unsuspecting lady was the luckiest of them all! In June, as the one millionth fair visitor passed through the gates, she was presented with 100 of the silver dollars from the exhibit. In the fall of 1962, just after the World’s Fair has closed, an ad appeared in a national coin magazine offering actual dollars from this exhibit, in commemorative holders, for $1.95 each. Or, you could purchase up to 5 bags per person for $1500 per bag of 1000.

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Great post.

Great info.

and, no, I have never heard of such a holder.

 

Yeah, great post! I wonder if the pile had an CC mintmarks? Just thinking out loud friends, but I wonder what happened to the pile. GSA sales? :yes:

 

In the fall of 1962, just after the World’s Fair has closed, an ad appeared in a national coin magazine offering actual dollars from this exhibit, in commemorative holders, for $1.95 each. Or, you could purchase up to 5 bags per person for $1500 per bag of 1000.

 

Well there it is there. Wouldn't that be great to have one of them bags stashed? :thumb: Oh well, guess I'll dream on.

 

They did release 'medals' for various attractions including the million dollar display, I just bought a group of the medals last week. This website is kind of an eyesore but is where I found my info about them. If you have any interest I will send you a bronze low-relief one, they don't mean much to me I just bought the lot because there was a silver one included and the whole thing went for under spot.

 

With silver at $40/Oz, the value of that display today (just the silver value alone) would be $30,937,600. I say we should recreate that display and set it right in the middle of the House of Representatives...as a reminder of what they're spending. :thumb:

 

Would total about two or three minutes worth or so wouldn't it.

 

http://www.usdebtclock.org/#

 

sorry to pick up the old thread, but they didn't make morgan dollars from 1905-1920

 

Nope, I think the mint bags were dated those dates, not the coins.

 

EUREKA! I FINALLY FOUND ONE! Check it out!!!!


I knew these had to still exist out there somewhere. :hail:

 

Was this where you found it?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/9-SILVER-DOLLAR-COIN-LOT-1885-1921-1926-1928-1900-EXPO-SEATTLE-WORLDS-FAIR-2-/320834583809?pt=Coins_US_Individual&hash=item4ab33b3d01#ht_500wt_1165

 

here is a good one :devil:

 

Yes - that's it. The listing reads a little fishy and I don't buy the story about them inheriting it from a relative, but then again, who knows....it could be true since the seller is located in Spokane, Washington. The holder looks authentic, though not as impressive as I had hoped. It looks a lot like all those Kennedy half dollar holders from the 1960's. My concern with this item is that the silver dollar contained inside is probably not an original one from the display. According to the seller, it is a very worn 1900 Morgan. I was under the impression that all these silver dollars in the display came from a vault in the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, so I'm thinking this should be an uncirculated specimen if it was orignal. The date is right, (1904 or before), but the condition is suspicious. It would be very easy for the seller to have removed the mint state original to sell at a higher price and then substitute a dog with the holder to get more money for the junky Morgan.

I'm still debating whether or not to bid on this lot. The only real reason to bid would be to obtain an example of the holder, but the price is way too high. I'm not wild about the idea of having to bid on a bunch of other junk quality silver just to get this plastic holder. I don't see the resale value being substantial enough to be worth that, although I suppose I could re-sell the junk and just keep the holder as a souvenir, but that's not what I was really after. I wanted an original dollar from the display in its original holder. Given the type of holder this is, (i.e. not a tamper-proof slab), I guess there is not much of a chance of finding something like that with any high degree of confidence. Oh well....

It was still fun to have finally found a picture of one of these. It confirms that they really did sell them through the mail after the fair, just as the old news reports previously indicated.

 

One just went for sale on Ebay as part of a lot of 9 silver dollars.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/9-SILVER-DOLLAR-COIN-LOT-1885-1921-1926-1928-1900-EXPO-SEATTLE-WORLDS-FAIR-2-/320834583809?pt=Coins_US_Individual&hash=item4ab33b3d01&autorefresh=true#ht_507wt_1123

My grandparents might have went to the worlds fair that year so there's a slight possibility they might have one in their collection. My grandma was an avid coin collector.

 

:thumb: That was your's truly here who won the auction, but only after spending a lot of time yesterday fretting and agonizing about it.

For a while, I seriously considered passing on this auction because I had a lot of doubts about this item. However, I decided to correspond further with the seller and satisfied myself that she was being straight with me. She told me that her grandmother attended the fair in 1962 and purchased the coin there. The coin later passed to her aunt a few years ago when the grandma died, then it passed to her when the aunt died. The seller lives in Spokane, WA, so that also lended some credence to her story. She said that she decided to sell the whole lot because she and her husband are raising money to take their kids on a vacation to Disney World this year.

I then re-read some of the articles about the display and learned that the bright, shiny uncirculated dollars that can be seen lying loose on top of the pile of bags were all Peace Dollars, not Morgans. The Morgans were still in the bags underneath the pile and I'm thinking it may be possible that some of those were circulated specimens that came back from banks but I'm still researching that.

In the end, I mainly purchased the lot because I was able to get it at close to silver melt for the 9 silver dollars and the 2 silver rounds and figured I could just sell the other coins and keep the World's Fair coin and case. It was a close auction. Another buyer with a high feedback score, (probably a dealer), also sniped against me during the last 10 seconds of the auction and I beat his bid by less than $5.00!

At present, I only have high confidence that the plastic case is authentic. I'm still not 100% sure that the coin inside actually came from the display since it could be easily swapped out, but will continue to research this to try to satisfy myself about that. However, if the sellers story is true, then I seriously doubt that Grandma ever touched it and the 1900 Morgan inside may indeed be the real deal from the display.

One thing is for sure....these cases are hard to find. I've looked for months and this is the first one I've come across. I don't know how many of these ended up being sold individually after the fair closed, but I figure many thousands must have been sold in these cases given the millions of visitors who went to the fair. Of these, you'd think many people just tossed them into a drawer and forgot about them, so there are probably quite a few more out there waiting to be discovered. But there also had to be a lot of attrition over the years as people either sold the coins or placed them into better holders for their collections and tossed the cases in the garbage.

Also, you have to figure that a lot of people's kids found the coins and either spent or sold them, as so often happens when kids find old coins around the house. So, after 50 years, I'm thinking that this holder may be a pretty scarce item. Heck, this cheesy little snaplock case may be worth more as a 1962 Seattle World's Fair collectible than the silver dollar inside -even at current silver prices. <chuckle>

Scarce or not, it is without a doubt a cool piece of numismatic history and I'm very happy to own it. Especially since I was born 6 days after the fair opened in 1962, which makes this a birthyear collectible for me as well. I can't wait for it to arrive in the mail. When it gets here, I'll take better photos of the case and the coin and will post them here for everyone to examine and comment on.

 

Nice research!