Why Would Anyone Want A Morgan Instead Of A Peace Dollar?

I have to go with Morgans of course. They are so diverse (is that the right word?) with 5 different mintmarks. Beautiful DMPL, and PL examples are also out there. GSA holders. A few examples of MS69 coins struck at the S mint in the early 80s. And for the reverse, I like the eagle's wings spread out better then being held against their will stuck to the eagle. I dunno, just my opinion...

Ok, so you have a "coin" that was never used as currency, was never needed as currency, and was kept in vaults, and then sold to collectors instead of being put to some other good use.

Sounds fishy to me. It would be interesting to have recordings of the off the record conversations that took place between the mints and the government officials of the day.

"Hey John, if we just tell people we accidentally bought too much silver, we'll have a huge surplus of ordinary silver dollars we can sell at a premium as collector items. "

"Sounds good Wilford, see if you can make sure they get exposed to plenty of air, so they'll get all toned and historic looking."

Again, let's at least get our facts straight. The above statements misrepresent the true state of affairs. They most obviously did circulate, mostly in the western areas of the country. They were overproduced per the requirements of the Bland-Allison Act, hence a large quantity were placed in storage, so in a sense they weren't "needed" other than to back the issuance of silver certificates. Many were melted down during WWI as mandated by the Pittman Act, and in fact this is the prime reason for the coining of the 1921 Morgans and the subsequent Peace dollars, to replenish stocks to once again adequately back the paper currency. Many more silver dollars were once again melted down during WWII. Up into the 1960's, the remainder in storgae were available at face value, and releases of these coins were arranged every Christmas season (due to their popularity as children's gifts). When the price of silver rose to a point where it exceeded the coin's face value, the Treasury conducted an audit, and discovered they had a lot of Carson City minted Morgans. Rather than melt those down (which was the initial inclination), the government actually did something sensible and auctioned them off through the GSA, generating a lot of reveune for the federal coffers.

I had already guessed you were a new collector just by the lack of knowledge, respect and facts you have.

Just by reading your posts it seems you are young as well.

We have a large quantity of senses of humor enroute, and we'll be distributing them for free when they arrive, to those in need.

scottk one must keep an open mind and consider the actual facts that those who have a LOT more knowledge of the Morgan dollars than you are providing. As you can see I do NOT have a Morgan dollar as my avatar and as many of the members know I am NOT an avid Morgan dollar collector. My specialty is Liberty Seated coinage and type sets. Yes, I do on occasion, buy a Morgan dollar for my collection and such purchase is for a very specific reason.

If you, for whatever reason, decide not to collect Morgan dollars then no one will criticize you for that. There are probably as many non Morgan dollar collectors as there are who can not get enough of them. To each their own but, to think that the government in the late 1870's made a conscious decision to over produce silver dollars so that nearly 100 years later they can have a public auction to sell them for a profit is ridiculous.

The Bland-Allison Act was essentially a necessary bailout for the silver miners in the west who were mining more silver than there was a market for. To keep the price of silver stable the government decided to buy most of that silver and instead of stockpiling bars of it they struck silver dollars which was preferred over the paper dollar in the west. Not mentioned yet is the fact that in the 1950's and early 1960's the government paid out millions of silver dollars over the counter to people at face value who wanted a real dollar with intrinsic silver value versus a paper dollar to stash away.