1889-CC $1 Morgan Silver Dollar S$1 NGC AU53

The obverse depicts Miss Liberty facing left, her hair in a Phrygian cap, and with LIBERTY inscribed on a ribbon or band holding a spray of leaves and sheaves. E PLURIBUS UNUM is above, seven stars are to the left, six stars are to the right, and the date is below. The reverse depicts a wingspread eagle holding a branch and three arrows. IN GOD WE TRUST appears in Old English letters above. Surrounding is the inscription UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and ONE DOLLAR. Production was continuous at the Philadelphia Mint from 1878 through 1904, after which there was a pause until the single year 1921. Additional pieces were made at San Francisco, Carson City, and New Orleans during the 1878-1904 span and in 1921 at Denver and San Francisco.

The 1889-CC silver dollar issue is unusual in that is was excluded, save for a single example, from the great GSA Treasury releases of Morgan dollars. The 1889-CC claims a low reported mintage of 350,000 coins, and much of the mintage was later melted, perhaps in the post-1918 Pittman Act in which more than 270 million silver dollars were melted down. In any case, today it is the great key rarity to the various CC-mint Morgan dollar issues, far overshadowing its nearest competitors for that title, the 1879-CC and 1893-CC.

Named after its designer, George Morgan, the Morgan Silver Dollar was the direct result of the Bland-Allison act of February 28, 1878. This legislation restored legal tender status to the silver dollar and required the Treasury to purchase between 2 and 4 million dollars worth of silver each month specifically for coinage into silver dollars. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, while repealing the Bland-Allison Act, called for the purchase of up to 4 million ounces of silver per month. Enough bullion was subsequently purchased to allow production of silver dollars to continue up to 1904. Many new collectors often wonder why many Morgan Dollar dates with original mintages in the millions are very scarce today. This is due mainly to the Pittman Act of 1918, which called for the conversion into bullion of up to 350 million silver dollars. Of the more than 50 million Morgan Silver Dollars produced up to that time, nearly 270 million were melted down. In such cases, such as the 12,000 1895 Philadelphia business strikes produced and then probably melted down in 1918; entire mintages were almost completely destroyed.