1866 $1 Motto MS(PCGS#6959)

Summer 2025 Global Showcase Auction U.S. Coins

Auktionator

Stack's Bowers

Losnummer

6025

Erhaltungsgrad

MS62

Preis

6.600

Losbeschreibung

OC Die State b/c. A satiny and sharply struck example dusted with sandy-gold iridescence that is bolder and more extensive on the reverse. This popular, yet challenging issue is the first in the Liberty Seated dollar series to display the motto IN GOD WE TRUST on a scroll in the upper reverse field. The addition of the motto, of course, in no way affected the actual coinage of silver dollars at the request of bullion depositors. This continued at the Philadelphia Mint and remained at wartime levels in 1866 and 1867. Despite the design change, those two issues belong to the same historical era in the Liberty Seated dollar series as the Civil War issues of 1861 to 1865. The trend toward higher yearly circulation strike mintages, when the silver dollar was increasingly looked upon as a convenient storehouse for excess silver from domestic production at the Comstock and other Western mines, did not begin until 1868.<p>Virtually all the 48,900 silver dollars delivered at the request of bullion depositors in 1866 were eventually used in the United States' export trade, as intended. The vast majority were melted in Asia, which markets they entered exclusively as bullion. The rare Mint State survivors, as here, represent coins that were either acquired directly from the Mint in the year of issue, as keepsakes and the like, or were retained as part of domestic bullion reserves and somehow managed to avoid being melted by the Treasury Department during the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Precious few at any level possess the strict originality and premium quality to support CAC approval, as here.