1887-O Morgan Dollar

The 1887-O Morgan Dollar was struck at the New Orleans Mint in 1887 and is part of the Morgan Dollar series.

Specifications

 * Designer: George T. Morgan
 * Obverse Design: Lady Liberty
 * Reverse Design: Eagle holding arrows and olive branch
 * Edge: Reeded
 * Weight: 26.73 grams
 * Diameter: 38.1 millimeters
 * Composition: Silver (90%), Copper (10%)
 * Mintage: Circulation Strikes: est. 11,350,000

Background
The New Orleans Mint would have the second-highest mintage for 1887 with 11,350,000 coins struck. The Philadelphia Mint would create an astounding 19,940,000 Morgan Dollars that year while the San Francisco Mint would churn out a comparably-small 1,771,000.

Collecting
The 1887-O Morgan Dollar is accessible with little effort to MS-63. In keeping with the comparably low quality output of the New Orleans Mint, these coins' strike is relatively weak with faintness shown around the hair of Miss Liberty and the eagle's tail feathers. A small fraction of these coins do have a strong strike so cherrypicking is recommended. The luster on these coins generally falls in the below average range.

Historical Background in 1887
On February 5, 1887, the Giuseppe Verdi opera Otello premieres at La Scala. Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887.

On March 3, 1887, Anne Sullivan begins teaching Helen Keller. Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.

May 9, 1887, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show opens in London. William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917) was a United States soldier, bison hunter and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), in LeClaire but lived several years in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory. Buffalo Bill received the Medal of Honor in 1872 for service to the US Army as a scout. One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill became famous for the shows he organized with cowboy themes, which he toured in Great Britain and Europe as well as the United States.