Q. David Bowers
The following narrative, with minor editing, is from my “Silver Dollars & Trade Dollars of the United States: A Complete Encyclopedia” (Wolfeboro, NH: Bowers and Merena Galleries, Inc., 1993)
Hoard coins: Like many of its sister New Orleans issues, the 1888-O dollars dribbled out of government storage and into the coin market in small quantities in 1946 and during the 1950s, especially from about 1955 to 1957-1958. Some of these came from the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., where they had been stored since the New Orleans Mint ceased operations. In 1957, Harry J. Forman was one of several dealers who had this issue for sale in large quantities.
In 1962-1964, many more 1888-O dollars were released from a long-stored cache in a sealed vault at the Philadelphia Mint. This additional quantity may have amounted to 100,000 coins or more, with some suggesting many hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more. Many of these were released in Montana. As an example of the quantities of 1888-O dollars on the market for a decade afterward, Wayne Miller told of buying nine original mint sealed bags of 1888-O dollars in 1971 and examining 16 additional bags in the same six week period, amounting to a total of 25,000 coins.
Concerning quantities of 1888-O dollars, John V. Kamin wrote as follows (letter to the author, October 29, 1992):
“I disagree with Wayne Miller on how many bags of these came out. I was searching for quantity lots of 1888-O all during the 1960s, and only encountered a couple of bags. I don’t know of any that came out after early 1964. 1888-O was always considered a premium date of silver dollars, as evidenced by the 1963 Guide Book, where it is listed at $6.50 in BU condition, while most other “common date” silver dollars are listed at much lower prices, including some scarcer dates. I will be most pleased if 1888-O is considered a common date by Wayne Miller, and other dealers, for many more years, giving my friends a chance to buy up any bags that come on the market. I think 1888-O is at least 300 times scarcer than bags of 1883-O, 1884-O, 1885-O, and similar ‘common date’ bags!”
The following was contributed by Maurice Rosen (letter to the author, January 22,1992: (First Coinvestors [FCI], located in Albertson, New York, was headed by Stanley Apfelbaum. At one time its shares were publicly traded in the over-the-counter market. FCI published the second edition [1976] of the Van Allen-Mallis book on Morgan and Peace dollars. FCI also published Breen’s Proof coins Encyclopedia and Swiatek-Breen on commemoratives, and negotiated with Doubleday for publication of Breen’s Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. & Colonial Coins (1988). A few years later both FCI and Stanley Apfelbaum were dead, having forever changed numismatics with these books.)
“One of my duties at First Coinvestors was to manage and acquire coins for our U.S. Silver Dollar Investment Program which at its peak in the mid-1970s had about 1,000 active investors. I recall handling bag quantities of these New Orleans issues. By today’s standards, they were all in low Mint State grades, MS-60 to MS-62, almost always softly struck, with not one coin making even today’s 64.”
Circulated grades: Circulated 1888-O Morgan dollars are very common in all grades up through and including AU-58. Mint State grades: This issue is very plentiful in Mint State, particularly in grades from MS-60 to MS-62, of which 100,000 to 200,000 are believed to exist, although this estimate may be on the low side-particularly if the Philadelphia vault hoard was larger than thought. MS-63 coins are plentiful. MS-64 coins are also common, perhaps to the extent of 20,000 to 35,000 coins. At the MS-65 level, the 1888-O is slightly scarce, with an estimated population of 4,000 o 8,000 pieces
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