Intrigue Surrounds Early Morgan Dollars
Perhaps the most popular series of coins among modern collectors is the Morgan dollar, coined from 1878 to 1921. Good reference books have been published about these coins, but we still have not learned all there is to know. New varieties are discovered on a regular basis, adding to the mystique of this design. The beginning of the story goes back several decades, to the 1850s.
The discovery of silver, in what is now Nevada, in 1859 was little noticed at the time, but the increasing amounts of that metal torn from the earth would in due course affect politics, the economy and the monetary system. At first, due to the Civil War and the hoarding of silver coins by the public, Western silver was primarily used to pay debts in Europe, especially for war materiels imported for use by the hard-pressed Union armies.
Once the war was over in 1865, however, Europeans began to tire of the large quantities of silver being shipped to them and increasingly insisted on gold. This created a growing surplus of silver in this country; one outlet was to have the bullion coined into dollars, and the Philadelphia Mint in fact began to strike large numbers of these coins as early as the summer of 1868.
In 1873, Congress finally acted by making changes in the monetary system; the Trade
