Why Does A Morgan Dollar Have More Silver Than 2 Barber Half Dollars (Etc)?

If I'm not mistaken, it goes back to the 1800's when they reduced the weight of our coinage (currently being minted).

Coinage act of 1792 stated that:

$1 dollars with 416 grains (27g) of pure silver
Half dollars with 208 grains (13.5g) of standard silver
Quarter dollars with 104 grains (6.74g) of standard silver
Dimes, spelled "dismes" until the 1800s, had 41 and 3/5 grains (2.7g) of silver
Half Dimes with 20 and 4/5 grains (1.35g) of standard silver

I don't have a copy of the RedBook handy, but I'm pretty sure that's where I read about the law reducing the weight of silver coins. I think it took place in the Seated series.

It probably is due to the fact that it cost less money to make ONE silver dollar than A DOLLAR worth of smaller amount coins.

In another words, "Labor Costs"

When the weight of the silver coinage was reduced in 1873 (4?), they left the dollar alone, thus creating the observed imbalance. Part of the trade-offs required to pass Congress in the era of bi-mentalism.

Gold finds in California 1849, and the Comstock Lode silver find in 1859 caused problems in the U.S. fixed gold/silver exchange ratio that was the law.

One way in which large denomination gold and silver served as money is that silver dollars and gold double eagles remained largely in US Treasury vaults.

For purposes large domestic commerce, the Treasury kept the metals and issued gold and silver treasury certificates that were widely used for large payments.

As a result of this arrangement, there are today, millions of uncirculated silver dollars and double eagles that sat mostly in vaults.

One exception was in international trade where hard metal was often required for payment as foreign traders did not have access to the US Treasury or domestic US banks.

To answer the original question, the fixed gold/silver was 15/1 in 1792, 16/1 in 1934 before the '49 gold rush. This caused problems as the relative value of gold and silver in dollars was not constant, especially in light of large supply and demand shocks, but the metal content of coinage could not be adjusted on the fly to reflect market conditions.

If a speculator was able to trade 2 half dollars (dated 1853-1873) for 1 Seated dollar he would instantly gain about 4% profit in silver content. I don't know how widespread this practice might have been but it likely contributed to the low survival rate for the dollar coins.

That difference in silver content persisted with the Morgan and Peace dollars and that did not reduce the survival rate of those coins significantly although a large number of them were melted. It did take silver dollars out of circulation.

Seated dollars are scarce mostly because very few were minted. Seated dollars mintages only exceeded 1 million in 2 years and then just barely.

About 6.5 million Seated dollars were minted. Contrast that with about 657 million Morgan dollars produced by the US Mint.

Informative indeed! Great to see all of these perspectives, I'm learning a lot.