1882 Morgan Dollars 1878-1921 MS63

History

The Morgan dollar owes its existence to the Bland-Allison Act, which became law on February 28, 1878, after Congress overrode President Rutherford B. Hayes's veto by votes of 196 to 73 in the House and 46 to 19 in the Senate. The act restored the legal-tender character of the standard silver dollar and required the Treasury to buy between $2 million and $4 million of silver each month for coinage, a response to the demonetization of silver under the Coinage Act of 1873 and the political pressure of the free silver movement. By 1882 the Carson City Mint was in its fifth year of Morgan dollar production. Most of the 1882-CC dollars struck never reached circulation; they remained in Treasury vaults until the General Services Administration sales of the 1970s.

Details

George T. Morgan designed both the obverse and reverse, and the Carson City Mint struck the issue with a CC mintmark. The reported mintage is 1,133,000 pieces. PCGS assigns separate catalog numbers to the different forms this date takes on the market: 7134 for regular strikes, 7135 for Prooflike, 97135 for Deep Mirror Prooflike, and 518866 for coins still in their GSA holders. That last number is a useful indicator of how thoroughly the hoard shapes the way this date trades.

Features

The obverse carries Liberty facing left in a Phrygian cap, her wreath incorporating cotton and wheat, with LIBERTY on the headband, E PLURIBUS UNUM above, thirteen stars around and the date below. Morgan's initial appears on the truncation of Liberty's neck. The reverse shows an eagle with outstretched wings clutching an olive branch and arrows, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and IN GOD WE TRUST above and ONE DOLLAR below, with a wreath beneath the eagle and the CC mintmark below that wreath.

Notable facts

• The Treasury conducted five sales of silver dollars from October 1972 to June 1974, moving roughly 1.96 million coins for about $55 million, with purchases limited to one date per household.
• PCGS lists the 1882-CC among the dates that sold out during those sales, along with the 1878-CC, 1879-CC, 1890-CC and 1891-CC, while roughly 823,000 unsold 1883-CC and 1884-CC dollars were disposed of in 1980 mail-bid sales.
• The hoard release significantly devalued the 1882 through 1884 Carson City issues, while the 1889-CC, 1890-CC, 1891-CC, 1892-CC and 1893-CC gained on genuine scarcity.
• NGC identifies the 1882-CC, 1883-CC and 1884-CC as the most common dates in the hoard, with more than 962,000 pieces of the 1884-CC alone turning up.
• PCGS records a top regular-strike grade of MS67+, MS67PL for Prooflike examples and MS67 for coins carrying the GSA Hoard designation.
• Coins remaining in their original GSA packaging trade as a distinct product from raw examples, and NGC grades both hard packs and soft packs while leaving the original holders intact.