When people think of gold coins, they sometimes imagine Spanish doubloons and other coins from antiquity, but Canada has its own history of gold coins. Whether coins with historical significance or modern coins sought for their purity and artistry, Canadian coins are a popular choice for investment.

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One of our first videos using Hangouts On Air with the help of John Ellis where we talk about rare coins – the Carson City Morgan Dollar – a topic covered in one of our earlier blog posts. We are trying to put together more videos like these where we get into the fascinating topics of gold, silver, jewelry, diamonds, coins, and other things. You can check our CanadaGold YouTube Channel: http://goo.gl/slSqOj

If you enjoyed today’s video on the Morgan Silver Dollar and want to find our more about other minters, we’ve created a handy guide on everything you need to know about The Royal Canadian Mint.

 

John:

Good day around the world, everyone. This is John Ellis for the Engagement Broadcast Network and today I’m with CanadaGold. This is the CanadaGold show. And joining me is Victor Minichiello from the CanadaGold office in Vancouver, BC. I almost said Victoria, but that’s a little farther North. And today we’re going to talk about Mintage and the Morgan Silver Dollar, which I believe is a US dollar. We’re going to find out about why certain of these coins are worth more than others. Victor, how are you doing today?

Victor:

I’m doing pretty well. Thanks, John. Thanks for introducing me. And I’m hoping today we have a pretty good show. I think we have a good topic to discuss today.

John:

We do. We do. I’m excited about this one. I used to collect coins, as you know. I had a couple of Morgan dollars back in the day, and I’m really interested to find out why certain ones are worth more than others and what makes the mintage so valued?

Victor:

Well that’s what we’re going to cover today. And in a blog post that I put together, this was, I guess a couple of weeks ago it was called, “What makes coins valuable?” And there are several different factors to what makes a coin valuable? And the one we’re going to look at today is mintage. And what is mintage exactly? It’s the number of issued coins in a given year. And like anything that’s collectible, if there’s a lot of it, it’s usually not worth a lot, but if there’s not so much, there’s only a handful, it’s going to be worth a lot because to a collector, they’re going to have that one and only item, or they’re going to have the item that no one else can have. And that’s what really mintage is. And that’s one of the biggest factors for coin collectors is, how many coins are available to collect?

Victor:

And a good example of that is the Morgan silver dollar. And that’s where we’re going with today. And to go a little further into what mintage is, we’re going to look at what mint marks are. And a mint mark is essentially a stamp on a coin that represents where that coin was made. And how does that add value to acquaint? Well, let’s say a mint facility makes 99% of the coins and then you have this one obscure mint facility that makes the other 1%, to a collector, that 1% is going to be… One of those coins made from that 1% is going to be worth a lot because there’s not a whole lot of them. If you have coins circling around the country and you come across this one particular coin, you can go like, “Well, there’s not a lot of these. It’s probably going to be worth a lot one day.”

Victor:

And that’s what the Morgan silver dollar sort of did. And what is the Morgan silver dollar and why is it significant? Well, let’s just say an old coin. It’s an old American coin. It has a lot of historic value. It was made between 1873 and 1904. So that’s a long time ago. They’re silver coins. They’re not pure silver coins. They’re about 90% silver, 10% copper, and they were made at Silver trade dollars. This was at a time where silver wasn’t worth a whole lot. So silver traders, what they would do is they would mint them into these silver dollars or these Morgan silver dollars. And there were worth a face value at a dollar, but that dollar was worth more than the silver that went into making them. So that’s how those silver traders were making money.

Victor:

So right off the bat, you can kind of tell, and these are old coins, they have some historic value and something a little bit more about the Morgan dollar that we just mentioned was the mint marks. And if you can pull up some of the mint facilities there, [crosstalk 00:03:58] that we had. Yeah. They were five mint facilities. The main one was San Francisco and Philadelphia. Those were the two biggest ones. They were making most of the coins. And the Morgan silver dollar was being minted around 1873. So those are the two facilities that started right off the bat. And then you have the lesser known ones, which is in New Orleans and Carson City. Denver was just for [inaudible 00:04:24] 1921. The Morgan silver dollar was made in 1921 for just that one year. And that was Denver only.

Victor:

Carson City, they started minting the Morgan silver dollar in 1878. Now what’s so special about the Carson City. Every collector, who’s collecting Morgan silver dollars, the Carson City Morgan dollar is the one that most collectors are after. Now, why is that? All in all it goes back to the mint marks and the whole thing to do with mintage and Carson City was not a very well-established facility. It arose, or it was built because the Comstock Node or Lode, rather, was discovered, which is just near Nevada. And it was one largest gold and silver mines ever discover. And this was about 1859. And that’s why the mint facility was made and all the gold and silver that was found was sold to the mint facility to be made into coins. So in 1878, Carson City was making the Morgan silver dollars. They made them from, I think it was from 1878 to 1893.

Victor:

So, already we can tell just from this one big facility, it’s an old coin. They’re silver coins. They weren’t made for a very long period of time. The mint facility eventually just ran out of business. And it wasn’t a very well-established… It wasn’t as established as San Francisco or Philadelphia. So a lot of the coins that were even being made weren’t even good enough to be in circulation. The supply of the [inaudible 00:06:07] was very low. And as time went on, these coins were going to be gathering value. And one of the main reasons why that happened was, after 1904 when the Morgan silver dollar wasn’t being made anymore, besides 1921, they were pulled out of circulation and melted down to be either used as pure silver or to be re-coined.

John:

Why? Just not worth it anymore, or they wanted different… They wanted the silver or…

Victor:

That is, this value of silver was too high to make silver dollars with. It wasn’t worth the silver to be used to make all those with. They were still making other coin, but the silver dollars, they’re big coins and they were… [inaudible 00:06:57] the dollar, I think US, the dollar bill was coming out or had been out already. It wasn’t worth it to make silver dollar coins anymore. So a lot of these Morgan silver dollars that were made either never saw the light of day or were melted down. And the ones that never saw the light of day that were stored in the US treasury vault and were kept there until the 1960s. So if you can pull up one of the Morgan silver dollars, you see the stamp on it.

John:

Okay. Can you find that one?

Victor:

The one that’s packaged, that would be great because these are the ones that all the collectors were after when the US treasury opened up the vaults and were basically selling these coins at face value. A lot of these were pretty rare coins, but the ones that they held off was the Carson City ones. And all I had to do is because of the [inaudible 00:07:54] and the low availability of them. They weren’t a lot.

Victor:

And so they realized that there was a lot of value in these particular Morgan dollars. So they approached the General Services Administration to auction all these coins. And the image that… Our view as of policy right now is the Morgan, the CC, the Carson City Morgan dollar in the package that the General Services Administration put together. And to point out, these are mint-state coins. They never saw the light of day. They were never touched. So these are the best quality rare coins you could possibly possibly get. And so they started auctioning off these coins and the charts that you also… If you can also pull that up just briefly. It shows the Carson City by date from 1878 and it only goes to 1891. They were minted until 1893.

Victor:

And the first column you see the mintage, those are the number of mintage. And then the number that were discovered. And then we see the last column, the percentage of the four that would be auctioned compared to the total that were minted. So if you just look at some of those numbers, 1879, less than a half a percent were being auctioned. 1890 0.17%, 1891 0.35%. And the three dates that are actually not on there is because not a lot of information was given and they’re actually, that’s to me, the most rarest CC Morgan dollars. And that’s the 1889, 1892 and 1893. You won’t see them on that chart because there’s just not enough information. And the percentages that are probably even lower than the one 1891 at 0.17%.

Victor:

These are extremely rare coins. They’re being auctioned off for a lot of money. And quite interestingly, the highest price realized for basically best mint-state, this was the 1889 Carson City Morgan silver dollar was at $881,250. Amazing. Yeah, that is amazing. That’s pretty remarkable for just one coin. And just that number alone kind of sums up why mintage and availability says so much about a rare coin. And that’s for any coin collector that’s seeing this, or is thinking of collecting coins as maybe as an investment, make sure you look at mintage and how many are available. Because that will be your first stepping stone into determining if you have a rare coin or not.

John:

Okay. So let me ask you this Victor. So you’re telling me that most people, when they look at coins, when I look at a coin, first thing I’m looking at is, I don’t know, how old does it look? How new does it look? And I’m going to look at it and go, “Okay, that’s an old looking coin.” But maybe more importantly, I think what you’re saying is that if it’s old looking now we’re getting into the quality of the coin, right? Like how deteriorated or not it [inaudible 00:11:14] is. And that may indicate all the better ways to do mintage. And then was the other factor? I’m sorry. Mintage and then…

Victor:

The mint marks.

John:

The mint marks, Okay. But how much? So mintage would be just how many points they’ve produced [crosstalk 00:11:28]. Okay, so those sound like much better ways to start to just look at, is it older, right?

Victor:

Yeah. Most of the time people just look for old coins, but just I’m not saying you shouldn’t, it’s definitely one of the first things you should look at. Like, do you have an old coin or not? And reason why a lot of old coins are worth so much because they were eventually pulled off of circulation and there isn’t a lot of them anymore. And then all that goes back to mintage. Mintage, you know old coins there weren’t a lot made. They didn’t have the technology to make or produce so many of these coins. And then when they were pulled off the circulation, because there’s so few of them, they’re more likely to be, by the end, or like by today, so few of them still available or still around that we know of. And that’s the Morgan silver dollar, especially the Carson City Morgan silver dollar is a good example of that because how often are you going to come across a Carson City Morgan silver dollar?

Victor:

Probably not. You probably will never see one because they were in the US treasury vaults and then it’s sold to collectors. So the collectors have them. If you happen to come across one by chance, that’s going to be one damn hell of a rare coin because you’ve found one that was in circulation and probably won’t be in best quality. And quality as a condition rather is another very important factor. But most of the time it really does come down to how scarce is this one coin? Anything collectible, things like my father used to collect baseball and hockey cards, cards there’s only maybe five or six that are ever made. And that’s why they’re so rare. And if you find one that’s in the best condition, of course that’s going to be the cream of the crop.

Victor:

You can still find one that’s in not so good condition, but it’s worth a hell of a lot just because there’s only a handful of them and a lot of collectors are… It’s a supply and demand. If there’s not a lot of them and people want them, it’s going to be worth a lot of money. That’s what the auctions are for. Just how to [inaudible 00:13:38] determine how rare a coin is. I’m not sure what the date was when that over 800,000 Carson City coin was realized or appraised at, but that was sort of a benchmark for a lot of collectors for like, “Okay, no, that’s what we’re looking for. That’s what we’re trying to reach in terms of finding a rare Carson city coin.”

John:

That’s cool. So I got a question for you. So because of the rarity, is there any reason in the future that you could think of that this coin would decrease in value?

Victor:

Decrease in value?

John:

Yeah. I mean, are these things that where their value is going to wax and wane for any number of reasons or are they pretty much a solid bet?

Victor:

Why they would devalue, I can’t really think of one. Even if the US mint started making Morgan silver dollars as a way to commemorate the Morgan silver dollar, even that would even devalue the coin because you also have to look at it from the point of view of a collector. A collector knows, the collector is informed how much that coin is worth based on these given reasons. Now, we looked at condition, and mint, and mintage and the history that’s behind the Morgan dollar. If you can cross all those things off your list, when you have a coin in front of you then you probably have a rare point. Well one of the ways they could devalue the coin, it’s kind of one of those things where it happens and you kind of just slap yourself in the head for it, is you take the coin out of those cases that made me show the picture of. You take the coin out of the case and you start touching it and playing around with it.

Victor:

Of course, that’s going to devalue the coin. [Crosstalk 00:15:36] To a collector they’re going to know that this coin was taken out. It’s no longer in mint condition. You probably see them in the Simpsons comic book guy in mint condition, in the plastic case, the common post. As soon as you take them out, they’re worth less people and well not to people, but to a collector. They’re looking for something particular. It’s really up to the collector, how they value that coin. A lot of the times, it’s just when it was made, and what particular coin is it? Does it fit this criteria? Okay, then it’s probably worth this much. And then you go into the nitty gritty and that’s the condition and whatnot. And the [inaudible 00:16:18], and what, and stuff like that. That’s all stuff that’s explained in the blog post that I put together.

John:

Yes. Where do we find that blog post? That would be on canadagold.ca, right?

Victor:

Yeah. Canadagold.ca, click on blogs. You’ll see a number of different kind of posts that I’ve put up there, but the one on evaluating rare points, that one’s pretty interesting. Because there’s a lot of different things that even when I was putting that together, that I didn’t even think of such as [inaudible 00:16:44] and whatnot. And the whole mintage thing, it’s a no brainer. It’s a no brainer. And that’s why I wanted to start with this, this sort of segment when you talk about the rare coins is because that’s the first thing we should look at. Is this coin… How many are there? How many are still available? How many collectors have this coin? Who has them? And where do you get it? Then those are the questions you should be asking if you’re thinking of finding a rare coin or if you think you have a rare coin.

John:

That’s cool. That’s cool. I’m sitting here playing around, looking for the other blogs. So I had a URL set up here, but it’s canadagold.ca/… What is the full URL there Victor? Tell everybody. We’re going to put it up in here.

Victor:

I think I had it somewhere. Yep. Canadagold.ca/evaluating-coins/ .

Speaker 3:

Outstanding. Get that in there. There’s a lot more information in there, but you just told me something that I didn’t even think about. I mean, my grandfather gave me a coin collection when I was very young. There were a lot of coins that were inside cases and such. I don’t know if any of them were sealed. I probably devalued all of them by opening them up, playing with them, running around, showing my friends. So when you… Something in a case like that, obviously there are certain ones that the government has sealed or were sealed for a reason. Those are the ones that we don’t want to open. Those are the collector ones you’re talking about. But if you had one that you just had stuck it in a case yourself, now that’s something where you know it’s not sealed. The collector can take it out, right? Yes/no?

Victor:

Yep. Like the one, the picture that you showed that was put together by the General Services Administration. That essentially certifies or legitimizes that coin as it’s been appraised. We know it’s mint state. We know where it’s come from. You know it’s the real McCoy. If it’s in that case, and you know all those things. And the General Services Administration has a certificate that stands behind that. That basically solidifies that coin as being a rare coin, a very, very valuable rare coin.

John:

Okay. What about [crosstalk 00:19:09] this one here? What about this guy? Is that one of those sealed?

Victor:

Hold on. I can’t actually… Right now I’m looking at the closet doors still.

John:

Oh, just a sec. Well, you can look at the bottom viewer and this is the one that’s in a prettier case. It says a uncirculated silver dollar Carson City, and it’s in… Maybe it looks like one of your guys’ cases. It doesn’t look like a GSA official-

Victor:

Yeah. That’s probably one of the cases that we put together.

John:

Okay. Okay. So this is what you guys would package something just to sell it to the customer.

Victor:

Yeah. That’s what a lot of… To resell coins it’s very, very normal. But to answer your question [inaudible 00:19:52]. You said it was your grandfather’s coin collection?

John:

Yes.

Victor:

I’m not too sure if he maybe packaged those himself, but usually if he’s put together a coin collection, as soon as you take them out a spot to a coin collector, they have no idea where that coin came from. They know they’re in the collection. It’s like, “Okay, I know someone’s put this together. They probably have done the research. They’ve taken the time to put this together.” So if you just take them out, maybe put it in your pocket, take them out again, well to a coin collector, he’s like, “Well, I don’t know where that coin came from.”

John:

Interesting. Kind of ruins of legitimacy for the coin collector.

Victor:

Yeah, it’s a risk thing for the collector too. Because it’s like, “I don’t know where that coin came from. I don’t know if I want to pay top dollar for that coin. I don’t want to take that risk.”

John:

So we hear the same kind of thing. I don’t know. Do you watch like Pawn Stars and shows like that?

Victor:

I have seen Pawn Stars. Yeah.

John:

Okay. So, I mean, I see the same thing all the time or Rick that the owner of the shop says, “All right, you’re telling me this is Elvis’ signature on a baseball cap. And here’s a letter from a guy that claims this is how it happened, but I don’t have anything that is legitimate to me as a collector.”

Victor:

Yeah. It’s the evidence that collectors want. And with Pawn Stars, they have have experts to come in to kind of legitimize certain things they’re not too sure before they set a price. And to a collector, they don’t always have it on hand. Or even at CanadaGold we don’t have someone to come in and be like, “You know it’s a rare coin, you should offer this price for it. That’s where the risk comes in, having things that are packaged properly and you know it’s certified. It has a certificate, it says everything to me there. And then of course, that adds insurance to a collector. If anyone collecting something rare and you want assurance, to you, you value it so much. You’re putting in the work to go out and look for this coin. You want to make sure you’re getting the same thing in return. so having all that information up front, it eliminates the risk of your investment. That’s what it is. It’s an investment.

John:

Yeah, it will. Absolutely. I mean, to me, it’s one of the cooler investments. I mean, I realize things like gold and platinum and bars are investments for a lot of people, but if I’m going to invest in gold or any metal, I’d rather have it be something with some kind of history to it for me personally.

Victor:

Yeah. And that’s actually a really good point. And I think I mentioned it briefly on the blog post is, historical value is something that really does collectors interests. And I think that’s one of the reasons why the Morgan silver dollar was sought after initially when the US treasury opened up their vaults to collectors to sell it basically at face value because they knew the history behind it. They knew the Carson City mint was made because of this mining discovery. It didn’t last very long. It was a very poor facility. And the key points that they knew Morgan silver dollars they had made were taken out of circulation and some were stored in the [inaudible 00:23:13] vault. They knew that already. By knowing that they know this coin is unique compared to a lot of other coins out there. It’s very unique and [inaudible 00:23:23] that you probably have in your pocket or in your piggy bank.

John:

Oh right, right. And so I got two more questions for you. So I was flipping through some of the other pictures that you loaded in here. We’ve got the other mints of the Morgan dollar. And I just want to go through… I’m putting up this other information here, but I want to look at some of those an let people know where some of the other mints were. Okay. So-

Victor:

That’s good. I kind of glossed over it.

John:

It’s okay. This leads into another question I have for you. But so, here’s the Morgan This is the Carson City, right?

Victor:

Yeah.

John:

Okay. Here we have, this is Denver obviously, right?

Victor:

Yeah.

John:

Here’s… What is this? New Orleans, right?

Victor:

Yeah, the, O should be New Orleans.

John:

Okay. So now is the new Orleans mint still around? Is that a big man? Small mint?

Victor:

I’m actually not too sure. I believe that it is still around. I’m not sure what kind of coins they’re making anymore. I think like the Carson City mint, those ones they disappeared a long time ago. I’m not sure if New Orleans same thing happened, maybe at a later time. I know Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Denver, they’re still kicking.

John:

Yeah. Denver [inaudible 00:24:42]. Okay., So Philadelphia?

Victor:

Philadelphia should be…. I have it somewhere, that information. I think Philadelphia has no mint Mint mark. That’s the Philadelphia one. The San Francisco and S for San Francisco and D for Denver. O for New Orleans. It’s CC for Carson City.

John:

That’s interesting. If I remember my history, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but the reason the Philadelphia mint has no mint mark is because it was our first mint.

Victor:

Yes, it was the first US mint.

John:

See, I remember some of my US history and citizenship class. All right, last question about this. I mean, who you guys are, you’re CanadaGold selling these US Morgan dollars here. What kind of turnover do you see on these? Like the ones you’ve got loaded in here? I mean, are they going to be gone in a week?

Victor:

Gone in a week? Oh, those ones are probably gone already.

John:

Oh, really? Wow. [crosstalk 00:25:47].

Victor:

… stored pictures that we had at the time. The kind of turnover, it does depend. Like that chart that you pulled up, I think the Carson City that you’re looking at there, I think that’s a 1984. That’s not one of the more rare Carson City Morgan silver dollars. So I think it’s the 1981. I’m not sure which one you got there. But the ones between 1981 and 1985, those ones go for about 2 to $600. That’s probably around roughly where we were selling those.

John:

That’s quite an increase on investment for a dollar coin.

Victor:

For a dollar point. Mind you there’s not a whole lot of them. But yeah, pretty good return. I’m pretty sure we had purchased those at silver value, which would probably be about 20 bucks.

John:

Wow. Wow.

Victor:

We did put them on our eBay store, CanadaGold eBay store, you can Google that. And we do have a number of different kinds of coins in addition to things like jewelry. And yes, that’s where we sold the Carson City, also our other Morgan silver dollars. And yeah, there’s some pretty good return. We haven’t come across very rare ones though. Those ones are probably never seen. It’s usually you do see a lot of the 1881 to 1885s. Those are those common ones sold on eBay or Amazon. And even that would just say, I think it was sponsored by GSA, but yeah, they’re essentially just selling those for about like 200 bucks, just because need to get rid of them. Not everyone was purchasing them when they [inaudible 00:27:43] them. The first ones to go were the 1879, 1889, the very rare ones because collectors, they wanted those ones.

John:

What about the 1921? Are those also rare? Was there a reason the 1921 coin was different?

Victor:

Yeah. Because those ones were only made in Denver.

John:

So I think my grandfather had a couple of those. The 1921s. That was what he had. And I remember taking one of them down to an appraiser. And this is, you got to remember, this is like 1982, -3. And it was not in good condition. It was in fair to poor condition. I think it was around 76 bucks, was the coin value that we looked up in the book. Don’t know what that would translate into today.

Victor:

Probably going to be similar.

John:

Interesting. Okay.

Victor:

Yeah, but I’m not too sure what some of the going rates for some of the higher mint states were for the Denver 1921 Morgan dollars. But another thing to think about is collections. I know you said your grandfather had a coin collection.

John:

Yes. Which I dismantled unfortunately, but yes, adequately.

Victor:

The Morgan silver dollars are a good example of this again, because you have the different mint marks and the different years. Sometimes like a coin, like the 1921, the Denver Morgan Dollar could be valuable because a collector is trying to complete a collection. [inaudible 00:29:25] taking a coin. You’re trying to get a coin from each of the mint marks. And that’s of course that’s like once again, it’s up to the collector, but it’s also a good point to illustrate how mint marks and trying to complete a collection, how a mint mark can add value in that case.

John:

That would be great. I’d love to explore that on another show and just talk about-

Victor:

Collections?

John:

Yeah. I mean, let’s talk about what would make a good collection. Do you sell entire [crosstalk 00:30:01] collections?

Victor:

I don’t think we’ve ever sold entire collections. I have purchased entire collections, well almost entire collections. I remember someone brought in almost an entire collection of silver Canadian coins. It was very, very huge. It must’ve been about 20 or 30 silver coins, but it’s usually a collector approaches for just one coin.

John:

So let me ask you about this. When somebody brings you a collection and they’ve put the time to put these all together and organize it in a certain way, does that increase the value overall for you as a buyer?

Victor:

As a buyer? It should. When this person came in, to a seller, it’s not, let’s not look at CanadaGold as an example, in this case, because our buy and sell is a little different from a collector’s buy and sell. For a collector, good point. To the seller, they put the time and energy into completing this collection. To a buyer, they will recognize that. “Hey, I can get an entire collection. Of course, I’ll just have to negotiate the price.” But a [inaudible 00:31:11] is arguably a little bit higher than putting the collection together myself. Do I want to go through the time and putting the collection myself, or do I want to buy straight up?

John:

Okay. So here’s my last question really about the Morgan dollar. And I think we’ve gone over an hour, which is great. Because we were talking about a half hour, right? So we’ve said a lot in here, this is fantastic. Why Morgan?

Victor:

Why Morgan?

John:

In my mind, I’m thinking JP Morgan, right? What Morgan?

Victor:

Morgan is the person who made the coin, or who designed the coin. His name was George T. Morgan.

John:

Really?

Victor:

Yeah. Designed the coin. The 1870s. It was 1873 when the coin was officially minted. It was in Philadelphia. What’s interesting though, is that early… I think was actually all Morgan silver dollars. What am I talking about? The averse, which is the one that has the Liberty on the back, George Morgan, he got the portrait of a friend of a friend. Her name was Anna Williams. That’s how you got the portrait for the Liberty. And so when you look at the Liberty on the Morgan dollar, you’re looking at Anna Williams.

John:

Oh wow. I’m trying to find that image. I wanted to pull up a better picture of it. And of course I can’t find the one I’m looking for here.

Victor:

Not a lot of coins are named after the designer. And that’s actually quite interesting about the Morgan silver dollar when I was doing some research on it for that blog post. I did do a blog post on the Morgan silver dollar as well. You can find it on the CanadaGold blog. But yeah, that’s one of the things I found interesting was that, the Morgan silver dollar was named after the designer, which is, I think, only happens every once in a while. Every few coins there’s named after the designer.

John:

Yeah. That’s pretty… I mean, considering the politics and bureaucracy surrounding coins in general, currency of a nation. That’s pretty cool. I mean and I know throughout history, we’ve had some other points that the US has done those kinds of things, named them after this, that and the other, but named after the designer, that is unique and completely not what I thought.

Victor:

It is unique. It’s definitely something you wouldn’t expect. And I’m not sure if this is true. I’ve tried to look this up, like why was it named after him? And you can’t really find a lot of things. It’s because they’re just stories. I think the reason why it was made is because, you kind of go back to politics, like you just mentioned [inaudible 00:33:53] political. You know that Morgan dollar was made as silver trade dollar. It wasn’t necessarily supposed to be made as a common circulated coin, like a quarter or a penny or a dime. It was made as a silver trade dollar. So maybe someone approached him and being like, “Do you want to make these dollars. We’re going to mint them.” And you go, “Can you design us a silver trading dollar?” And maybe he was like, “Okay, sure.” [inaudible 00:34:21]. He liked it. He said, “Okay, I want you to call it the Morgan silver dollar.” That’s just my guess. I think it’s a good guess compared to any. It’s all probably makes for a good story, I’m sure, if there is one out there.

John:

Right, right. That’s cool.

Victor:

IT’s definitely something you don’t see very often, a coin named after someone. Usually like the Canadian dollars, some of the coins there, they will be after the queen. Like commemorative coins are named after the queen, because she’s on the offers. You see her face every time you look at money.

John:

We looked at some really cool, talking about those, it was at the last episode, we looked at some really cool coins that had the queen on them. [crosstalk 00:35:12].

Victor:

Yeah, it was great, right?

John:

Yeah. The work, the little details that they did to make them stand out, the polish versus the non-polish on the gold. That was just amazing to me.

Victor:

Yeah. They’re really getting fancy with the coins now. They’re doing new stuff. Sometimes they put jams or different graphics on it. But the coins, they’re not…. The earliest is the Morgan silver dollar. They’re not the same. And I think that’s why collectors, they like the old coins because they’re so unique compared to other coins that are coming up now. They’re just so flashy. They kind of like the old look, old gritty look on some of the older silver coins.

John:

Yup. So it’s creating a diversity in the market. You’re going to have people that like one or the other I’m guessing.

Victor:

Yeah, completely.

John:

Well, fantastic. Victor. I think we should wrap it up. Is there anything else you want to let people know? We’ve got the blog post there. Anybody looking to collect Morgan silver dollars, what would you tell them?

Victor:

Would I tell them? I would tell them to talk to us on Google Plus. Got any questions about coins, or looking to collect coins, or buy, or sell, reach out to us on Google Plus. We’re CanadaGold on Google Plus. And we’ll answer your questions. We’ll refer you to someone else, or someone in our CanadaGold store team, if we don’t answer your questions because that’s where we are to to talk about this kind of stuff.

John:

That’s great.

Victor:

That’s what I would say.

John:

Well, and I’ll second that, because every time I have a question, I find you in Google Plus and ask him. To date, you guys haven’t let me down. So thank you very much. This is Victor Minichiello with Canada Gold. And we have been talking about mintage and the Morgan silver dollar. Join us next time for another episode of the Canada Gold show. Goodbye around the world. This is John Ellis with EBM.

 

In What Makes a Coin Valuable  we found out that there are several different things to consider when evaluating coins. There are the niddy-gritty details that numismatists look for such as condition, toning, and rare varieties, but most of the time, a coin is considered valuable because there aren’t a whole lot of them. In other words, we are considering their availability or mintage.

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At one point in time it was very common to see circulated silver coins. On January 2^nd, 1908 when Canada opened its first Royal Mint in Ottawa, the “first coin” (half-dollar) was a silver coin (92.5% silver/7.5% copper). From then until the late 1960s, Canada, much like everyone else, produced silver coins, with exception to the penny (bronze) and the five cent (nickel). But the 1960s marked the death of silver currency coins. It wasn’t just Canada, but most countries around the world were making nickel or copper-nickel coins.

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What’s the difference between a 1918 Canadian 50-cent coin and a 1921 Canadian 50-cent coin? Easy answer: 3 years. Informative answer: the 1921 is far rarer (suspected that only 75 exist), and is worth 25,000 times more (estimated to be worth $249,000 USD).

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