The Dollar: Complete History and Evolution of the U.S. Dollar Coin

hey everybody how's it going christian from charter town here and i'm super excited to share today with you a complete history of our dollar coin now these are the base unit it's a really historic symbolic coin and a lot of them are well collected but we're gonna be starting all the way back with the very first flown here half-dollar little spoiler started 1794 making our way up through the ages will be hitting the morgan piece dollars as well as the smaller clad dollars so we'll go all the way up until the present where we have a variety of circulating gold dollars but we'll start at the back we'll talk about eras varieties values and specific information about each coin along the way so let's get into the presentation i've talked over it and i have it ready to go and here we have it the very first ever u.s. dollar design and that's the flowing hair dollar 1794 to 1795 so as a very short-lived and there's only 200 survivors left today of the first year's dollars 1795 not quite as rare but the 1795 had three primary types there was a two leaves three leaves and silver plug and the reason that they would put a silver plug on some of the coins is that and there's one on 1794 that's extremely rare and that's to correct the weight of potentially underweight Blanchett's so they were trying to make these so that they could be used in circulation for their silver value and they needed to have all them at the same weight now each of the four types discussed has a lot more diver aia teas and are categorized in the Overtoun numbers and we're not going to talk exactly about those but there were 15 stars that commemorated the states that had ratified the Constitution at this point and originally they were going to use a point eight nine to silver standard as the purity but that eventually shifted and that was what was used as point nine zero zero so 90 percent silver was the composition of these coins very circulated which is about a good four it was about a two thousand dollar coin on the 1795 lightly circulated ten thousand which is like a X f40 an uncirculated four hundred thousand when I used the they're not for specific rarities they're more for the least expensive of each type the next one that we'll move to is the 1795 to 1798 drape bust dollar and on the back there is a small Eagle here and while the bust designs were really short-lived on the dollar they'd be mainstays in some of the other denominations early 19th century appearances and the drape busts and small Eagle combo might be the scarcest type of dollar of any coin the prices are roughly the same on all four coins but the 1797 is the scarcest of all and all these were made for utilitarian purposes so there's no attention paid to them in terms of being careful with the strikes like before lots of different styles variations in the size of the date letters and the placements of the Stars in addition to those overton varieties values are about 1,500 for really circulated 7,000 for lightly circulated and uncirculated in the 60 so not 65 it's about a hundred fifty thousand dollar coin as we move along we get to the heraldic Eagle which is a different type of great busts dollar with a similar obverse but very different reverse based off of the Great Seal of the United States and outside of a tough to find variety from 1799 all the stars are standardized to seven left of the bust and six on the right of the of the bust and 1801 to 1803 are the scarce err dates but are not super super rare and some of the coins were produced in 1804 but backdated to 1801 1802 or 1803 there's tons of different varieties and there's too many to get through here and then the 1804 Dollars and often those were produced much later are the most scarce of any coin probably in existence I think that there was even a bid in the 10 million plus range for one of them but it didn't meet the reserve so it didn't sell would have been the most expensive coin to ever have sold but the 1804 is a super significant coin but it's not really included in these because it wasn't really supposed to happen then we skip ahead a long time to 1836 which is when the Gobrecht dollar Gobrecht flying eagle dollar was first made these are very expensive and quite popular with collectors there were a significant number of restrike meaning that they were struck well after the fact iemon back dated and were considered pattern coins for a long time meaning that they weren't supposed to be in circulation until there's some evidence that they were actually placed into commerce at the time so some of them are considered regular issues on the reefs trikes are almost always proof while the original ones aren't there's a lot of complicated debates about the different types of alignments there's like a coin alignment metal alignment there's tons of its it's not really super clear what the picture is and it's beyond the scope of this video I don't fully understand it myself and about 1,600 total of these were made the only other thing I'll mention is that this cap a top of pole was the cap of a Roman freed slave which symbolized Liberty on the coins again these are quite expensive six thousand for a very circulated one fifteen thousand for lightly circulated and 150,000 for uncirculated a similar coin was released in 1839 there also some dated 38 that had no stars it's this still ago wrecked flying eagle dollar and these aren't quite as expensive these were not struck for circulation many were struck much later and about 300 were made total the values 800 for the very circulated ones but they increased significantly with lightly circulated about 25,000 and uncirculated 175 thousand we then move along to the 1840 to 1865 no motto ceded Liberty dollar so these had similar designs to a lot of the other coinage of circulating at the time half-dollar dime quarter and the ceded style was the first large-scale circulating dollar so there are a lot of scarce and rare issues on this series with all of them being pretty tough to come by but 1851 52 and 58 are the major rarities here proof started in 1858 but there were a few scattered earlier issues from prior dates but they really started in 1858 and I'd say it's a pretty overlooked series in coin collecting I honestly didn't really know that they existed until recently not quite for the making of this video but it was like you know they're really not talked about too much and some of them are kind of attainable in terms of their price very circulated ones $800 lightly circulated 3500 and uncirculated 22,000 500 those are more expensive compared to the next which is the 1866 to 1873 motto ceded Liberty half dollar so if you look back there's nothing above the Eagle here they've added in god we trust' and the values as you can see drop $200 very circulated 500 4xf and fifty thousand for bu coins the mintage is on these are pretty low compared to like Morgan and peace dollars but they're more common than the older ones 1870s is an extremely well known variety about 12 pieces known and in Carson City in Nevada also started making coins briefly and all those are very scarce the coins do not circulate too much for whatever reason so there's not much of a difference in terms of the lowest conditions on the price that's just kind of a little fun fact the next step we'll talk about is the trade dollars which were made in business strike from 1873 to 1878 and there would be proofs up until 1885 but these were made as a way to compete with the Mexican dollars in Asia so they were strictly made for export and weighed slightly more than a standard silver dollar and these had legal tender until 1876 until they had their status revoked the proofs from 1884 and 1885 are extremely rare super expensive multi-million dollar coins and a lot of these that have survived today have chop marks in the form of Chinese characters from merchants and bankers who were testing the coins as they came in to make sure that they were authentic 1878 saw the bland Allison Act passed and that required the government to purchase tons of silver from out west and turn it into silver dollars so that obviously meant that there was going to be more silver dollars being made this was the design that was chosen by Morgan I think its name was George Morgan I should know that but they're one of the most popular of All American coins and iconic and American coin collecting some of the key dates include the Carson City coins especially 1889 Carson City CC is the mint mark as you can see right here that's where you'd find the mint mark 1893 s and 1895 s are also quite rare they were once the mainstay of Las Vegas casinos and slot machines but now he use chips and tokens but that was a primary use for these guys they stopped in 1905 and would return in 1921 just for one year one important thing to note about these is that there's van varieties or Van Alen Mouse varieties and there are hundreds of them that occurred on the coins which add value and interesting attributes that weren't necessarily supposed to be there there are all sorts of minor varieties with you know different aspects of the coins that are just not what the normal coin should be so people get really into that and it's a fun way to collect that adds a lot of depth to this series and that's something that also continues over to the 1921 to 1935 peace dollar there's still those van varieties but these were made to commemorate the worldwide peace that followed World War one 1921 and a few 1922 dated coins had a very high relief but that actually caused problems and striking and quality of the coins so they ended up slightly redesigning that to accommodate a design that would not cause production issues still evocative of the peace design 1928 P is the key date and uncirculated from 1927 s and 28 s are really hard to come by and accelerate a lot in terms of value I realized I've forgotten the Morgan value they're generally like seventeen to twenty dollars until you get to uncirculated which for a common one is $80 but the values on the really rare ones way way exceed that here the very circulator are about fifteen dollars lightly circulated around 20 while uncirculated is about 60 there are also a few special strikes that I talked about on my peace dollar video but there's a lot of depth to this series as well there were no coins made of this design from 1929 to 1933 and again from 1936 to 1963 but they're about three hundred and sixteen thousand struck in Denver in 1964 that are supposed to have all been eventually destroyed there are some circulating rumors that a few 1964 de coins did survive but the coins would be confiscated by the Treasury so none have appeared on the private marketplace but again for all we know they could be out there next coin to come about would be the Eisenhower dollars starting in 1971 and running through 1978 they're the first large dollars in a really long time for circulation except this time they were clad and celebrated Dwight Eisenhower and the landing of men on the moon on the back there were some special Bicentennial designs over here made in 75 and 76 with very change reverse to reflect independence but still incorporate the moon and there were also proof versions and 40% silver coins you can tell if it's 40% silver because the edge will be completely silver colored there won't be that copper ring the coins often weren't struck really well so high grades can lead to significant prices for the business or regular strikes so it could just look really shiny and be worth a fair amount of money there are a lot of different errors and varieties including three types of 1972 that have to do with the type of Earth that is used and there's also a proof coin that's from 1976 with no s that's extremely rare it's one-of-a-kind at the moment it was just found so maybe there's a few more of those out there but that's one to look for these don't have much additional value maybe they're a dollar and 20 cents but they're not going to be you know 10 bucks each or anything too crazy where you really want to avoid spending these after that we've got the susan b anthony dollar which was much smaller came about in 1979 to 1981 and again in 1999 for a year and these were made to meet demand using vending arcade and other coin-operated machines that needed coins with more value than a small 25 cents these metallic coins could survive for about 16 years as opposed to 18 months or paper dollars so they cut costs and this was made to meet that demand the reverse was similar to the Ike dollar averse but there were a lot of problems a lot of people confuse them with quarters while the machines were slow to adopt or outright ignored the switch there was a lot of public resentment actually towards these and they stopped the mintage in 1981 they brought them back briefly in 1999 and then transitioned to the gold small-dollar coins like the sock under ways there is a wide rim variety 1979 where again the rims were just too wide that's worth a few extra bucks and there were some different style estimate marks on the proof coins in 79 and 81 that if you have the right one could add a fair amount of money unfortunately like that-like dollars you might have one of these but it's probably just worth the dollar unless it has one of these errors or varieties as we come to a close we have a coin that's pretty recognized today it's the Sacagawea dollar from 2000 to 2008 it's a really heavily promoted series that resulted from the coinage act of 1997 and had the same size and weight as a susan b anthony dollar except there was a golden color and a plain edge demand was really low and the mintage dropped 99 percent to about five or six billion a year in 2002 and now they're viewed as curiosities or even annoyances by the general public thirty nine coins were struck in 22 karat gold in 1999 twelve of them survived but all of them are held by the government they travel into space on a space shuttle Columbia which was pretty neat some of the rarities include a speared eagle variety and the Cheerios dollars which I have videos I don't know if they already came out or they're coming out which are from 2000 and they range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars in value but again if you don't have one of these significant errors it's probably just gonna be worth one dollar in 2009 they switched the designs slightly moving some of the lettering to the edge and including reverse designs that would be evocative of different contributions and life events for the Native American people some of the designs include the agriculture circa a thousand ad the Great Tree of Peace in the 1400s and the Wampanoag Treaty of 1621 and one of the errors in these coins is that sometimes they're missing the edge lettering so that can be a cool air to look for the last coin as the 2007 to present presidential dollars any deceased president has their you know they appear on these coins and they honor all the US presidents under what's called the Presidential dollar coin program there were four designs issued every year with each president receiving three months of striking time and they all have the same reverse design with the Statue of Liberty some of the notable errors include missing edge lettering which was originally really rare but then was found much more frequently as well as wrong date coins where the plaintiffs would probably literally fall on the floor and then get minted on their edge with the wrong coin or the wrong you know lettering for a coin later so that's kind of a neat thing they would make the reverse and the obverse at one point and then do the edge lettering later so that's how that happened but again the coins don't feature any presidents that are still living outside of really high grade or error coins they're again just gonna be worth a dollar so you can spend them unless you have something that's significant that brings us to the end very very different coin from the original 1794 dollar that we made and it's cool to see how the traces of that have kind of evolved over the years thanks for watching the video I'd encourage you to like comment and subscribe and if you want to get in touch with me do so on my website treasure town y-t-dot-com my Instagram treasure town whitey or my Facebook treasure town I've got links in the description and I'll see you on some of my other videos

Channel: Treasure Town

Views: 7,302

Rating: 4.9849625 out of 5

Keywords: dollar coin, silver dollar, morgan dollar, us dollar, us dollar coin value, us dollar history, one dollar coin, susan b anthony dollar, eisenhower dollar, peace dollar, trade dollar, bust dollar, old us dollar coins, 1794 dollar, old dollar silver coins, gold dollar, how much is a dolalr worth, 1921 dollar, 1804 dollar

Id: 7jjFmUMESN8

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 06 2020