I am looking at the Whitman blue book for morgans. the 1883's for instance 1883 $16-30, 1883 cc $80 -170, 1883 0 $17-28 and the1883 s $16.50-510. Why would an O be worth more cirrculated but not much more uncirculated, than a S is worth less circulated but so much more Unc? And the 1879 CC 132-3200 while the1881 CC is 300 circulated and only 350 uncirculated. Doesn't make sense to me does any one else know, and could you explain it.:headbang:
There is tons of reasons for all different types of anomaly's in pricing. 1. Morgans had a large GSA hoard so there are alot of dates and MM that are almost all in MS. 2. Many melted, lost, worn clean down. 3. Vam options for people to collect. 4. Guides can be wrong 5. Someone is trying to manipulate the market of a specific date/mm Basically it's all supply and demand like the CC's get collected more so more in price they go! There are more possibilities but you get the idea.
Vast quantities of Morgans were stored, uncirculated, in Treasury bank vaults until 1962 when the govt. started releasing them to the public. Coins that were formerly rare in mint state, like the 1903-O, suddenly became common. (in early 1962, an MS 03-O was worth 10x an MS 1889-CC!) It's a lot easier to find an MS CC mint Morgan from 1882-1884, than one in say, lightly circulated condition. This information comes from Bowers' "A Guide Book of Morgan Silver Dollars," pub. by Whitman, one of the Red Book Guide series. It's great reading and I highly recommend it!
Anokanite, That's a very insightful question, and not one that would be commonly asked. I'm glad to see you put mental effort into the question. The previous posts have answered your question quite well. Basically, some coins are commonly found in uncirculated condition, while others are so scarce as to be unknown. With Morgans, you have to examine the year and mint to determine exactly what happened. Fortunately, we have pretty good records to sort through the mess. Between the original coins that were preserved, and the tremendous melting that took place a few decades ago, we can figure out pretty well how many surviving specimens exist. I might recommend one of the excellent books on this topic. Specifically, the "Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan and Peace Dollars" by Van Allen and Mallis. This will speak not only to die varieties, but to existing populations and striking conditions. Also, "A Buyers' Guide to Silver Dollars and Trade Dollars of the United States" by Q. David Bowers is a great reference. Good luck!
Good question and this was a great answer. You really have to study the history of the mints, the coinage and the politics in play to understand what went on. Especially with Morgans. It's not always as cut and dried as most people would think. Read about the Pittman Act. This was a huge, government mandated meltdown of silver dollars. There could have been trade dollars mixed in there too I suppose but I'm not sure. But assuming ALL the silver dollars melted were bags of Morgans, that one act alone melted enough to wipe out the entire mintage, from all mints, from like 1890 through 1921! Now, obviously it didn't, because there are plenty of examples from most years yet. Nobody's sure what did get melted. The point is, many of the lower mintages you see in the books stand for the absolute max we started with. Now, who knows what is left. Low mintage Morgans are likely much lower than the original mintage figures we're left with. Also, there were collectors back then too. If there was something special that everyone thought would be valuable, then we have a lot of MS examples remaining, thus driving down the price. If nobody paid much attention, then most everything circulated, thereby wearing them down and leaving very few MS examples left. Which causes high premiums. The only reason most Morgans are still very affordable in MS is because bags and bags, hundreds of thousands of them, never circulated. They were government mandated and not very popular for daily use in most areas of the country. All the supply has kept prices down over the years, for most. HTH's.
it has to do with how many there are today and in what shape for some San Francisco issues, most were heavily circulated and lots less remained uncirculated some issues had millions remain in bags uncirculated until the 1960's some issues had most melted, so not many remain in any shape
Supply and Demand for each grade is the answer. Many coins are scarce in some grades and not others, especially with silver dollars where often times the coins from some mints in some dates were stored at the mint rather than circulated. This means low supply for circulated coins and thus higher prices. When these large quantities of higher grade (usually UNC) coins were released years later, the supply went UP in primarily UNC condition so the price went down for those grades. While the market won't ever value a circulated piece higher than the Unc piece, the supply may very well be smaller for circulated than Unc pieces for some date/mint coins. Sorry if I'm being redundant, but I have a tendency to answer the question before I finish the thread.
