The Type 2 gold dollar of 1854 had been hard to strike, and in 1856 Chief Engraver James B. Longacre reworked it. He made Liberty's head larger and flatter, essentially a reduced copy of the head on the three-dollar gold piece, and moved the legend out toward the rim. The metal now flowed into the dies far more easily. The reverse was left exactly as it was. This version, the Type 3, was struck until the denomination ended.
In its early years the Type 3 was still a working coin, and four mints made it. Philadelphia struck it every year from 1856 to 1889. San Francisco struck it from 1857 to 1860 and once more in 1870. In the South, Charlotte struck it only in 1857 and 1859, and Dahlonega every year from 1856 to 1861. Output was falling by the end of the 1850s: about 51,000 gold dollars were made in 1860, only 1,566 of them at Dahlonega.
The Civil War ended the Southern branch mints. Dies for 1861 reached Dahlonega on January 7, and two weeks later Georgia left the Union. State authorities took charge of the mint, and Confederate troops occupied it on April 8. CoinWeek reports that the gold dollars dated 1861-D were all struck after that date, before the mint closed for good in June. No record of the mintage survives. Neither Dahlonega nor Charlotte ever reopened, and New Orleans, though it later resumed coining, never struck another gold dollar.
By mid-1862 hoarding had driven gold and silver coins out of circulation in most of the country. Philadelphia struck 1,361,355 gold dollars in 1862, the last year the figure topped a million, and only 6,200 in 1863. Mintages never recovered, apart from 1873 and 1874, when the Treasury melted old, worn gold dollars and recoined them ahead of the planned return to specie payments. When payments resumed at the end of 1878 the gold dollar still found no place in commerce.
What kept it alive was demand from outside commerce. Collectors and speculators put the low-mintage dates away, and jewelers bought large numbers to mount in pins and rings, often exporting them for the purpose. The Mint sold proofs at a small premium, and proof mintages passed 1,000 in 1884. Mint Director James Pollock had already written in 1873 that the coin was too small to be convenient, and his successors called for its abolition. The last gold dollars were struck in 1889, and the Act of September 26, 1890 ended the denomination along with the three-dollar piece and the three-cent nickel.
