1872 $1 Liberty Seated Silver Dollar NGC MS62

Here’s a dramatic and rare silver dollar to add to your collection. NGC has graded 32 as MS62 with 41 finer. Collector’s Universe prices this issue at $3,750.00 in MS62. To discover why this issue is rare, please see below.

Writes NGC Coin Explorer, “In 1872 silver dollars were worth a significant premium over the paper currency which then dominated commerce in most of the nation. It would [take] another five years or so before they traded at par to one another. So why, then, were silver dollars coined in large numbers at the Philadelphia Mint?”

The answer is that beginning in 1867, the Mexican government added a 12 percent excise tax on all silver coins being exported. Thus, U.S. merchants active in the China trade, per the free silver provision, brought significant amounts of silver bullion and worn old coins to the mints to have them made into Liberty Seated dollars to be shipped to the Orient. 

Clipper barque Spirit of the Age, 1854. Liberty Seated dollars were shipped to China on ships such as this. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Here's some compelling circumstantial evidence to back that up. The total mintage of the 1872 Liberty Seated dollar was 1,105,000. However, PCGS and NGC combined have graded only 2,025 original examples of that issue. That figure represents only 0.18 percent of the mintage, suggesting that a vast majority of those coins were sent to China. Of course, a very small percentage did circulate. However, in 1872 a silver dollar was worth over a dollar which made it de facto bullion for the China trade.