1885-CC Morgan And The 1916-D Mercury Dime The Mintage And Prices Don't Make Sense

I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on the demand side of the equation but at least from looking at ngc there are over two orders of magnitude more 85 cc's graded at 64 or higher than the 16-d's. I'm assuming this is due in part to the gsa hoard?

jacripsies has rightly made the point.

The inference from that is,
that 1916 D Dimes in MS grades must be quite rare, and therefore command very high prices at auction.

I don't know the Morgan series as well as I do the Mercury dimes, but the 1916-d is the key to that series. I'm not sure that the same could be said of the 1885-cc Morgans. For sure anything minted in Carson City is desirable, but is the 1885 key to the series?

It seems odd that there aren't more uncirculated 1916-D. Usually the first coin of a new series is kept by a lot of people. For 1916-P the PGCS blurb says "Many were saved as it was the first year of issue", so why not 1916-D?

The >=MS60 survival estimate of 100 posted above seems off - PCGS shows 388 and NGC has 235. Since any grade 1916-D gets submitted, it seems like a good statistical sample, and 4% of the PCGS pop (9,822 total) is UNC.

Edit: oops, the survival estimate of 100 does not include FB, which PCGS says is 600.

I agree with the upthread comments, and wish to add some thoughts.

Silver dollars were large, clunky, heavy, and unwanted in circulation. Most languished in bags in vaults until they were melted in 1918, were purchased in the silver rush in the 1950s and 1960s, or were sold by the GSA later. They weren't minted because of need in commerce, but rather because of the Congressional mandate to purchase and coin the silver from the Comstock Mine. Coining dollars was more efficient, because a standard silver dollar has more silver than a dollar of subsidiary coins. Those factors partly account for the relatively high survival rate of many Morgans.

The 1916 dime design change occurred late in the year. Mercury dimes were not released to the public until late October 1916. See The Numismatist, December 1916, p. 544.

Many collectors of that day collected by date only, and not by mint. Most collectors lived in the eastern states, and would have had much easier access to the Philadelphia coins.

Denver and the West were still in a severe recession. The west's economy was obliterated in the depression of 1893-1896. The eastern states called it the "Panic of 1893," but in the west is was far worse. Michigan had 44% unemployment. North Dakota had no surviving banks. San Francisco had an estimated 85% unemployment, which helps explain why hoping to strike gold in the Yukon seemed so appealing to Jack London. Denver had 39 banks in March 1893, 3 banks in April 1893, and no banks by May. Over half of the businesses in Denver went into bankruptcy in 1893. Recovery from this depression took decades, and opening the Denver Mint was delayed from completion of the building in 1896 until 1906 because of this. By 1915-1916, Denver was still struggling to rebuild an economy. No Barber dimes were minted (or needed) in Denver in 1915 or 1916. The small 1916 Mercury dime mintage in Denver was likely done more just because Philadelphia sent a few 1916 dies to Denver than because of commercial necessity. Notice Denver's comparatively small 1917-D mintage, still reflecting the sluggish economy. Full recovery from the 1893 depression didn't start in much of the west until the mid-to-late 1920s, and that was just in time for the 1930s depression. Mintage figures for subsidiary coins at the branch mints often reflect this economic reality.

Ten cents had quite a bit of buying power in 1916, especially in a severe recession. It wasn't easy to miss a meal to save an UNC dime for posterity.

I agree with fortcollins and would add that there was also the Panic of 1907. It was as scary as the Great depression but was closely averted. That was when financier J.P. Morgan bailed out Wall Street after the failure of the Knickerbocker Trust, the 3rd largest trust company in the U.S. That episode was the trigger for legislation in Congress to create the Federal Reserve System in 1913, our nation's central bank. In a 3 week period in October 1907 stocks dropped 50% and almost collapsed the New York Stock Exchange. This was in the middle of intense speculation in railroad, steel and coal stocks which were the "high tech" stocks of the time.

There was also a scheme by an industrialist in Butte Montana named Heinze at the time who tried and failed to corner the copper market. He was allied with a New York Wall Street banker named Charles Morse who had successfully cornered the New York ice market.

If you've visited Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia, you may recall that, in colonial times, Jefferson had a facility in his home to create large amounts of ice. In federal buildings in New York and Alexandria VA, there are many underground facilities built to provide and store ice. Even back hundreds of years ago, no one wanted to drink a warm beer in the summer, so ice was a luxury good in our past mostly used at taverns and the homes of the wealthy.

I would like to own a well-circulated 1885CC. That is a real rarity. PCGS shows 27 in F12 vs 4759 in MS65. Thanks to the GSA it's much more affordable than a worn 1889 CC. The 1916D dime is not interesting to me.