Morgan Dollar values, and the four things that set them

The Morgan Dollar is the coin most people picture when they picture an old American silver dollar: a big, heavy piece, 38.1 mm across and 26.73 g of .900 silver, struck from 1878 to 1904 and again for one year in 1921.

A common circulated Morgan is worth roughly $69 to $101. Nearly 657 million were struck across the series, so common is the usual case, and the price is really the silver plus a collector premium that never quite goes away.

The mint mark decides most of it

On the reverse, below the wreath, above the letters DO in DOLLAR. Five mints struck Morgans:

• No letter for Philadelphia
• O for New Orleans
• S for San Francisco
• CC for Carson City
• D for Denver, 1921 only

CC is the one to look for. Carson City struck Morgans in small numbers from a mint that closed in 1893, and the two letters carry a premium on every date, sometimes several times the coin's ordinary value. The 1889-CC and the 1893-S are the series' famous keys.

Strike, and why San Francisco coins look better

Not all mints struck with the same pressure. San Francisco coins tend to be sharply struck; New Orleans coins are often soft, particularly over the hair above the ear and the breast feathers of the eagle. Two coins in identical condition can be worth very different money because one of them was struck properly.

The place to look is the hair above Liberty's ear. On a well-struck coin the strands separate. On a weak strike it is a flat patch, and that patch will follow the coin forever.

Surface: the thing photographs cannot settle

Morgans sat in bags in Treasury vaults for decades, and how they were stored shows. Original mint lustre, the cartwheel sheen that rolls across the fields when you tilt the coin, is a large part of what an uncirculated Morgan is worth. A coin that has been cleaned has had that surface scrubbed off, and it never comes back.

This is where a photograph runs out. Lustre is a property of how light moves across a surface as it turns, and a still image cannot show it. Any tool that quotes you a mint-state price off one photo is guessing at the single most valuable thing about the coin.

That is why our range for a Morgan is wide and why its low end assumes the coin has been handled. If yours has not been, it is worth more than the number, and it is worth having somebody look at it in person.

1921 is a different coin

The 1921 Morgans were struck from new dies after a seventeen-year gap, in much higher relief-flattening quantities, and they are the most common Morgans there are. A 1921 Morgan is generally worth less than a coin from the original run in the same condition. It is still silver, and it is still a Morgan, but it is not the scarce one.

Fakes exist and are not subtle

Counterfeit Morgans, particularly of the key dates, are common. The tells are usually weight and diameter: a real one is 26.73 g and 38.1 mm, and cheap fakes miss both. A kitchen scale accurate to a tenth of a gram settles more arguments than any photograph.