Morgan Dollar Value

Morgan dollar value – what affects it?

No doubt about it – there is nothing more thrilling than finding something out about the coin you just bought that you didn’t know – taking your Morgan dollar value higher than you thought.

We are going to look at some of those factors here and discuss the kind of things that will make the difference between profit and loss in your coin dealing. The one thing we cannot take out of the equation is desire. If your coin is particularly special or if it is, for instance, one which will make up a gap in your collection, then it is worth more to you than any other Morgan silver dollar out there at the time.

If you are collecting on the basis of the mints that issued the Morgan silver dollar, and you have examples from Philadelphia, San Francisco, Denver, and New Orleans – but you are missing one from Carson City – you may well be tempted to pay over the odds for such a coin. A dealer, or site, that you are thinking of buying from may not know this, so you get a relative bargain because the Morgan dollar value is worth more to you, than it is to them.

There is a whole list of factors which affect the price you will pay.

The most important and obvious one is that the condition of the coin is paramount. A deeply soiled, indistinguishable coin will invariably fetch a lower price than one which is crisp, well minted, clean and has a deep luster.

What are we looking for?

Because there are no variations in the design of the coin throughout its history – this is not going to be a factor in any Morgan dollar value pricing decision. There is no difference in appearance between the 1902 Morgan and a 1921 Morgan.

Morgan silver dollars only have two basic variations:

• The date the mint struck them
• The location of the mint that struck them

The US Mint produced Morgan dollars over a period of 27 years. This was broken down into two periods. One was a continuous production run between1878 and 1904. The other was a one-year production cycle in 1921.

Within these periods there are around 100 variations in the series overall. Of these varieties, so many coins were produced in certain years, and from certain mints, that around 50 of these variations can still be bought for less than a hundred dollars. The Morgan dollar value is lower as these tend to be the lower grades of MS-60 to MS-63.

There are then a series of coins which comprise around 25 of the 100 variations which can fetch between $100 and $500.

After this, there are several tranches of rare coins which can fetch over $1000 – some extremely rare ones reaching as high as six figures or more.

Over time, the market has seen most of the coins out there, and there is good knowledge of the numbers struck and the likely amount left in circulation. Less than one in five of the originally minted Morgan silver dollars survive today.

Before the Morgans stopped being struck, in 1904, it was almost a license to print money.

In fact, the coins were recalled and melted down by the government, after 1918, to pay for the United States role in the First World War.

The fun comes in guessing where the melt value of the silver introduced the temptation to sell the coins – not for their Morgan dollar value or their coin value – but for their inherent melt values – and which coins are left in the market.

Melting down an 1893-S or an 1889-CC may have seemed like a good idea at the time but now the numismatic value of these two coins is comparatively astronomical.

Availability is the key

Gold coins have always had collectability in the United States. The problem with gold is that it is expensive. This makes it accessible only to the relatively few people who can afford it.

Silver has always been the poor man’s gold. Such coins are far more affordable – and the coin price that much lower. Morgan dollar values, by comparison with something like a gold Saint Gaudens Double Eagle, seem cheap.

As with any collection, there are certain standout items – or “must haves” – which every collector should aspire to.

In the world of Morgan silver dollars, the key dates are the 1878 Morgan, 1889 Morgan, 1890 Morgan, and 1891 Morgan.

Sites like PCGS (Professional Coin Grading Service) are a great guide to prices and regularly updated for those who want to shop around and research the coins they have, or those they intend to buy.

Impartial grading and authentication are paramount when establishing the Morgan dollar value of a coin. PCGS, for example, have graded over 41,282,834 coins. Their site is a valuable source of information for beginners and experts alike. You can find it here.