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Coins/ Dollars / Early Dollars/ 1794

FINENESS .8924ASW 0.77344 OZT26.96 G

Overview History First Mint Die Marriages Key Dates 1804 Dollar Collecting Grading Checklist References

Issue RecordKEYPhiladelphia89.24% Silver1 of 15 issues

1794 Flowing Hair Dollar

The first United States silver dollar, delivered October 15, 1794. One die marriage — BB-1 / B-1 — so there is no 1794 variety set to complete, which makes it a type collector's coin and a pure condition play. PCGS estimates 150 survivors across all grades, 10 in mint state, 4 at MS65 or better. Auction records $10,016,875 (silver-plug SP66, January 2013 — the first coin of any nation to cross eight figures), $6,600,000 (the Lord St. Oswald MS66+, August 2021) and $4,500,000 (MS63+, November 2025).

1794 early dollars — obverse and reverse

The numbers, and what kind of numbers they are

Every figure carries its evidence class. Press a class to open the record behind it — what it rests on, by what method, and what the series says you should not conclude from it.

RECORDED DELIVERY

1,758

The Mint recorded what the Chief Coiner DELIVERED in a calendar year, not what it struck bearing a date. Where the registry combines years, the split is a reconstruction and the class says so.

DATED ATTRIBUTION

1,758

What the trade assigns to coins bearing this date. A modern allocation by an outside authority, not a federal record.

ESTIMATED SURVIVORS

—

No STRUCTURED census exists for this series yet — not because none has been published, but because the published estimates live in the key-date prose and were never carried as figures with their own attribution and date. Retyping them here would be authoring data from downstream text, so the slot stays empty until the research leg structures them.

DIE MARRIAGES

How many obverse/reverse die pairings are catalogued for this issue. A marriage is a distinct pair of hand-cut dies, which is what makes these coins collectable by variety rather than by date alone.

What the record asserts

The figures above are measurements. This is the proposition they support, in the Archive's own claim vocabulary — a different scale from the figure classes, because a claim can be probable where the number behind it is exact.

CLAIM1,758 silver dollars were delivered in 1794, the balance of the Mint's combined 1794-1795 figure of 204,791 belonging to 1795.

STATUSPROBABLE — the Archive's assessment of the proposition, not of the arithmetic.

CLAIM IDearly-dollars-1794-delivery-1758

Specifications

SpecificationValue

DENOMINATIONDollar

DESIGNERRobert Scot

COMPOSITION89.24% silver, 10.76% copper — 371¼ grains of pure silver in 416 grains of standard silver

WEIGHT26.96 g

SILVER CONTENT0.77344 ozt

DIAMETERNot fixed by statute. The Act of April 2, 1792 specifies the dollar's weight and fineness and says nothing about its diameter; surviving coins run to roughly 39–40 mm.

EDGELettered — HUNDRED CENTS ONE DOLLAR OR UNIT

MINTPhiladelphia only — the first and, until 1838, the sole United States mint

MINT MARKNone. No branch mint existed, so no early dollar carries a mint mark.

DIE MARRIAGES1 (BB-1 / B-1)

From the book

Chapters that cite a document this coin's figures rest on. The same source id, reached from the other direction.

CHAPTER ONEThe First Silver
A shop with horses, a statute about to expire, and 1,758 coins on an October afternoon — where every early dollar comes from.CHAPTER FIVEThe Ledger and the Date
The Mint counted deliveries, never dates — and confusing the two columns manufactured the most famous coin in America.

The primary record

Every document behind the figures above. Where OunceDesk holds a copy, the row opens it.

"Dollars and Half Dollars of 1794 and 1795", The Numismatist, March 1927, p. 151
Held in the Archive · behind recorded delivery

PCGS CoinFacts
External authority — not held by OunceDesk · behind dated attribution

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