1798 $1 Draped Bust Silver Dollar, BB-113 Pointed 9, 4 Vertical Lines PCGS MS61

The specialist is Draped Bust coinage should take a careful look at this listing. This BB-113 is quite rare in mint state grades. PCGS has graded only 1 as MS61 with 3 finer. In all, PCGS has graded only 23 examples of the BB-113 variety.

The 1798 is quite a rare issue. Out of the mintage of 327,536, there are an estimated 5,000 total survivors today in the 21^st century. But where did all the other coins go? The U.S. silver dollar had less silver than the ubiquitous Spanish-American 8 Reales (aka Spanish dollar) that circulated in the United States at the time. The Draped Bust silver dollar had 371.25 grains of silver, while the full-bodied Spanish dollars employed in international trade had around 377.25 grains.

A rare artifact of the exchange arbitrage of silver dollars in the West Indies: a 1798 Draped Bust dollar with the British Union Jack stamped upon it. Photo: Stack's Bowers Galleries. 

Even though that was the case, in the West Indies the U.S. dollar and the Spanish dollar traded at par. Therefore it was profitable for merchants to partake in a continual cycle of exchange arbitrage: ship American silver dollars to the West Indies and trade them for Spanish dollars. In that manner the U.S. silver dollars virtually disappeared from circulation. The vast majority of U.S. silver dollars ended up being shipped off as part of the China trade, where they were discounted and melted into Chinese bullion called sycee.