1895-S Morgan Dollar

As the year 1895 unfolded, the United States economy was still suffering the fallout from the Panic of 1893. At the same time, with the repeal of the Sherman Act, silver dollar production was no longer mandated by law. In this environment, there was little need or desire for new Morgan dollars.⁽¹⁾

Accordingly, Morgan dollar production in 1895 was low, just as it had been in 1893 and 1894. Official documents recorded a minuscule mintage of 12,000 circulation strikes at the Philadelphia Mint, although none have ever been seen by collectors. The New Orleans branch mint hammered out a meager 450,000 pieces, barely outpacing its San Francisco counterpart, where only 400,000 dollars were produced.

A few mint bags of the 1895-S were released by the San Francisco Mint from 1942 to 1950. Many of these ended up in Nevada casinos, but by the mid-1950s, the 1895-S dollar was generally viewed by numismatists as an important rarity in the Morgan series.⁽²⁾

Fascinating Fact: LeVere Redfield of Reno, NV secretly accumulated approximately 400,000 silver dollars (mostly Morgans) during his lifetime. Upon his death in 1974, the huge stash was revealed behind a false wall in his basement. Starting in 1976, a liquidation program was organized by several of the nation’s largest retailers to get the coins into the marketplace.⁽³⁾ Reportedly, the Redfield hoard contained an estimated 1000 examples of the 1895-S Morgan, most of which were heavily bag marked or damaged by a coin counting machine.⁽⁴⁾

Notwithstanding the discovery of the Redfield hoard, the 1895-S has remained one of the key dates in the Morgan dollar series, with an exceptionally good price performance trend, though down somewhat in recent years.

Warning: Do not stand between a motivated collector and an 1895-S dollar with good eye appeal!

Please Note: For the Morgan dollar price trend survey, only grades F-12, VF-20, EF-40, AU-50, and MS-60 were analyzed. Higher grades, Prooflike (PL), and Deep Mirror Prooflike (DMPL) were omitted because in these conditions, even rather ordinary Morgan dates can attain astronomical values that could easily skew results. The goal of the survey is to identify coins demonstrating superior price trend histories, regardless of grade.

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Trendline Avg = 13.01	GOOD

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