1901 Lesher Dollar - HK-795a, George Mullen, No Number

Coin Details

Auction Record

Description

The 1901 Lesher Dollar HK-795a is the George Mullen variant without a serial number. Joseph W. Lesher (1838-1918), a mine owner of Victor, Colorado, who had backed William Jennings Bryan's free silver campaigns, issued numbered eight-sided silver pieces in 1900 and 1901. He called them referendum souvenirs: holders were free to accept or refuse them, and the octagonal shape kept them apart from federal coinage (Collectors Universe essay, 2017). They are 950 thousandths silver, the rest copper (same essay; APMEX, search). Collectors number them by Hibler-Kappen's so-called dollar catalogue (HK) and by Farran Zerbe's list (Z), as NGC does. For 1901 Lesher made the pieces smaller, 32 mm and 412.5 grains, the weight of a standard silver dollar, and left a space on the side with the landscape for each merchant who took them to stamp a name and town; the other side cites his trademark and his design patent of April 1901 and the price of one dollar (Collectors Universe essay). The essay lists merchants in Cripple Creek, Denver, Grand Junction, Pueblo and Salida, and one in Nebraska, who took them in lots of 50 to 260. Catalogue numbers: HK-795a, Zerbe-9. PCGS number 19011.

Cross References

HK-795a; Zerbe-9