Carson City Morgan Dollar

The Carson City Morgan Dollar was produced at the Carson City Mint with ore mined from the famous Comstock Lode.

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%)
 * Dates Minted: 1878 - 1885, 1889 - 1893

Background
Carson City is the capital of the state of Nevada. It’s located on a fairly flat desert plain, with the wooded Sierra Nevada mountain range as a backdrop. About fifteen miles to the east, nearly 8,000 feet up on brown and barren (save for scattered sagebrush) Sugarloaf Mountain, is Virginia City. If you’re going to talk about the Carson City Morgan dollars, you have to not only talk about Carson City, but nearby Virginia City as well.

History
Virginia City, Nevada once sat directly above the world’s richest silver deposit. Though the earliest prospectors came to the Nevada Territory (it was not yet a state) seeking gold, they began to discover far more silver than gold as they worked their way up Gold Canyon to the present-day site of Virginia City. A drunken prospector from Virginia, James Fennimore, gave the site its name when he accidentally dropped a bottle of whiskey on the rocks and dubbed the ground, “Virginia.” By 1863, Virginia City was a major boomtown, eventually becoming a 19th century version of Las Vegas.

Beneath the steep, tiered streets of Virginia City was a bonanza of riches in the form of the rich silver of the Comstock Lode. Miles of mine shafts ran underneath Virginia City, and indeed, some $400 million in bullion (mostly silver, some gold) came out of these mines. One of Virginia City’s early residents was a young journalist by the name of Mark Twain who wrote, “Money was plenty as dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and a melancholy countenance was nowhere to be seen.”

Exquisite Victorian mansions were built on Virginia City’s upper streets, while further down was the business district, which by the 1870's, would contain an Opera House, three newspaper operations, four church, schools, theatres, numerous saloons, and a grand hotel with the first working elevator in the West. On the lower streets were the houses of the poorer miners and prostitutes.

The mines of Nevada, the Comstock Lode mines in particular, were such a source of wealth, that the United States granted Nevada statehood in 1864, despite the fact that it did not have the requisite population for statehood! But the United States was embroiled in the Civil War, and they did not want to risk losing the mineral wealth of Nevada to the Confederacy by being rigid on the statehood requirements! Meanwhile, the mine owners had petitioned Washington for a branch mint to be opened at Carson City, Nevada for the purpose of coining all the silver ore coming out of the Nevada mines– this way, all that precious ore would not have to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains to the San Francisco mint. Such a crossing was risky, what with bandits often lying in wait! The bill to establish a mint in Nevada was passed in 1863.

It took a while to get the new branch mint at Carson City going. The expense of getting the proper machinery, the proper dies to the new mint, were considerable– far more than was calculated. Legal paperwork and the Civil War also impeded progress. Still, a stone structure, located in the heart of the Nevada capital, Carson City, was in readiness, and even withstood a major earthquake in late 1869. But finally, in 1870, coining began– the first coin to be struck at the Carson City mint was the Seated Liberty dollar. In fact, 2,303 1870 Seated Liberty dollars with the new “CC” mintmark was paid out to the mint’s first silver bullion depositor, Mr. A. Wright.

True, the Carson City mint struck other coin denominations besides the silver dollar. But the Carson City silver dollars seem to be particularly popular with collectors, as the silver dollar or “Cartwheel” is synonymous with the huge Comstock Lode silver strikes of the late 1800's. And though the Carson City mint struck Seated Liberty dollars and Trade dollars in the 1870's, it is the Carson City Morgan dollars of 1878-93 that draw the most collector attention. It is the Carson City Morgan dollar that most collectors can envision tumbling out of money bags when high-rolling gamblers of the Old West played risked their fortunes in the saloons of Virginia City and Carson City. In fact, if you go into Virginia City’s Silver Queen Saloon today, you’ll see a huge painting of the Creole “Silver Queen” herself, Julia Burlette, decked out in a flowing gown made up of over 3,000 Morgan dollars!

The Carson City mint was always a trouble mint, from the beginning. It stammered and staggered along, suffering work shortages, silver that bypassed its facility for the more profitable San Francisco mint, the Grover Cleveland Presidency when the Republican-operated mint was shut down by the new Democratic President, bullion depositors who preferred payment in form of ingots instead of coins. Coining operations ceased finally in 1893, though the mint operations carried on for years afterwards as an assay office. Today, the Carson City mint hosts a museum display of its mint days, as well as the Nevada state history museum, complete with a mine shaft recreation!

The U.S. Treasury held hoards of mint-state Carson City Morgan dollars of 1878, 1880-85 in its vaults until 1974. At that time, the vaults were opened, and thousands upon thousands of Carson City Morgan dollars were auctioned off to the public for just a few dollars each. Whoever bought one of those dollars then, has made a tidy little profit. A “common” Carson City Morgan dollar retails around $100 in Fine, $220-$230 in basic mint-state. The dates of 1878, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1890 and 1891 are the most common of the Carson City Morgan dollars.. The 1885 and 1889 Carson City Morgan dollars are the two toughest dates, retailing $600 and $1,600 in Very Fine respectively. Still, rest assured that all Carson City Morgan dollars are much in demand, thanks to the romantic lore that surrounds them.

Mints

 * Carson City Mint (No mintmark)