Seated Liberty Dollars 1840-1873

The Seated Liberty dollar took its obverse from the Gobrecht dollars of 1836 to 1839, which Christian Gobrecht engraved from a drawing by Thomas Sully. When full production began in 1840, Mint Director Robert M. Patterson dropped the Gobrecht dollar's flying eagle and used instead a heraldic eagle with a shield on its breast, based on John Reich's design of 1807, so the dollar matched the quarter and half dollar. Patterson also had the Philadelphia artist Robert Ball Hughes rework the seated figure: Liberty's head was made larger, her drapery heavier and the relief lower, and thirteen stars were added around her.

The first 12,500 dollars were struck in July 1840, and larger runs followed in November and December. Philadelphia struck every year of the series. New Orleans joined in 1846 and struck dollars again in 1850 and in 1859-1860, and stopped when the Civil War began. San Francisco struck them in 1859 and 1872, plus an unrecorded 1870 coinage and a recorded 1873 one that has never been found. Carson City struck dollars from 1870 to 1873, and its first coins paid out, on February 11, 1870, were Seated Liberty dollars.

Few of these coins ever circulated at home. After the California gold discoveries, silver rose in value against gold, and a silver dollar held more than a dollar's worth of metal. Little silver was brought to the Mint to be coined, and mintages fell to 1,300 in 1851 and 1,100 in 1852. The Coinage Act of 1853 lowered the weight of the half dime through the half dollar but left the dollar alone, so the dollar never received arrows at the date. Where the later coins went is debated: Q. David Bowers holds that most of the post-1853 dollars went to China in payment for tea and silk, while R. W. Julian argued that many were sent west instead.

In 1866 the motto IN GOD WE TRUST, first used on the 1864 two-cent piece, was placed on a ribbon above the eagle. Philadelphia mintages passed one million in 1871 and 1872. The Coinage Act of February 12, 1873 ended the standard silver dollar and created the trade dollar in its place. Standard dollars came back in 1878 with George T. Morgan's design.

Obverse. Liberty sits on a rock, holding a pole topped by a liberty cap in her left hand and resting her right hand on a shield with the word LIBERTY across it. Thirteen stars surround her, and the date is below.

Reverse. A heraldic eagle with a shield on its breast holds an olive branch and arrows, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA around the top and the value ONE DOL. below. There are no rays behind the eagle. From 1866 a ribbon above the eagle reads IN GOD WE TRUST.

Mint mark. Below the eagle on the reverse. Philadelphia coins have none.

Telling the types apart:

Things that cause confusion.

• Gobrecht dollars. The 1836–1839 dollars show the same seated figure in higher relief with a flying eagle on the reverse. They are a separate series.
• Trade dollars. Struck from 1873, they show Liberty seated on bales of merchandise, a different design by William Barber, and are heavier than the standard dollar.
• Originals and restrikes. Proofs dated 1851 to 1854 and 1858 include coins struck years after their date. Specialists separate them by die pairing, using the die-marriage reference by Dick Osburn and Brian Cushing.

• 1851 (1,300 struck) and 1852 (1,100): business strikes made while silver was worth more than face value. Both dates were restruck as proofs once collectors took an interest: the 1851 restrike has the date centered, while the original's date slants upward, and NGC knows of no 1851 proof struck that year. For 1852 the Mint struck both original and restrike proofs, though David Akers doubted any were made in 1852 itself. Published estimates for the restrikes run from 35 to about 90.
• 1853 proof: struck from a single pair of dies used for no other date. Most specialists call these restrikes, but NGC notes they could be originals.
• 1854 proof with the Reverse of 1840: the reverse die first used on 1840 proofs marks the original 1854 proofs. Osburn and Cushing estimated three originals survive, against about 40 restrikes struck with a later reverse.
• 1858: proofs only, with no business strikes. NGC estimates about 275 originals and 35 later restrikes; published totals range from 210 to 300.
• 1846-O (59,000): the first New Orleans dollars, all from one pair of dies.
• 1859-S (20,000): San Francisco's only dollar coinage before 1870.
• 1859-O (360,000) and 1860-O (515,000): bags of both came out of Treasury vaults in the early 1960s, which is why many survive unworn.
• 1866 No Motto proof: two known. The Mint did not sell them, they were probably struck a few years after 1866, and Judd lists the coin as pattern J-540.
• 1870-CC: the first coin of the Carson City Mint. Mint figures give 11,758; Osburn and Cushing cite R. W. Julian's research for 12,462.
• 1870-S: no mintage was recorded. NGC counts nine confirmed coins and Breen listed twelve. They may have been made for the cornerstone of the new San Francisco Mint building.
• 1871-CC (1,376), 1872-CC (3,150) and 1873-CC (2,300): small Carson City coinages. Many 1873-CC dollars were probably still at the mint when the type was abolished and were melted.
• 1872-S (9,000): all struck in September 1872 from one pair of dies.
• 1873-S: Mint records list 700 struck, but no example is known. Two went to the 1874 Assay Commission and were not kept.

• Composition: 90% silver, 10% copper
• Weight: 26.73 g, unchanged through the series
• Silver content: 0.7734 troy oz
• Diameter: 38.1 mm
• Edge: reeded
• Designer: Christian Gobrecht, after a drawing by Thomas Sully; the obverse reworked by Robert Ball Hughes for 1840