1795 $1 Flowing Hair Silver Dollar, 3 Leaves NGC XF45

A rich coppery golden-brown patina adorns this extremely rare example of the 1795 Flowing Hair silver dollar. NGC has graded 131 as XF45 with 279 finer.

This dramatic example will find a home in the collection of a sophisticated numismatist, one who appreciates history—both numismatic and American. Collectors have always known that this issue is a great rarity, but have you ever read an explanation as to why? Please see below and AUCM will tell you what very few people know about Flowing Hair dollars.

The First Philadelphia Mint, where the Flowing Hair dollars were produced. Image: usmint.gov.

Out of an original mintage of 160,295 there are just about 4,100 pieces of the 1795 Flowing Hair dollar available to collectors today. The dearth of specimens today is due to a few reasons. Even though the early U.S. silver dollars weighed less than the Spanish-American Carolus (8 Reales) dollars, in the West Indies they were trading at par. Because of that, merchants purchased Flowing Hair dollars and shipped them to the West Indies to trade them for Carolus dollars.

Then they would bring the Carolus dollars to the Philadelphia Mint to serve as bullion to mint new Flowing Hair dollars. Afterwards they would bring new Flowing Hair dollars back to the West Indies to trade for more of the Carolus dollars. There was no seigniorage charged by the Mint for that service; thus, it became a continuous cycle of exchange arbitrage. But what happened to the silver dollars in the West Indies, you may ask? Well, they were shipped off to China to compete with the Carolus dollars in trade. However, Chinese merchants did not trust U.S. dollars, which weighed less than the Carolus, and virtually all of them ended up being chopped, melted down, and converted into Chinese bullion called Sycee.