Morgan Silver Dollars 1878–1904 · 1921
The big silver dollar of the American West — struck because the Bland–Allison Act obliged the Treasury to buy Western silver every month, and rarer than its mintages suggest because 270,232,722 of them were melted for bullion in 1918.
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Ten benchmark issues
Every one of the 97 issues carries a mintage from the Mint's records. These ten decide what a Morgan date set costs — each for a different reason, named.
1893-S
Lowest business-strike mintage of the series, released into hard Western use and never rescued by a hoard — the king of Morgan keys in every grade. PCGS estimates roughly 10,000 survivors across all grades and only ~123 in mint state.
1889-CC
The rarest Carson City dollar. Struck the year the mint reopened, it circulated in Nevada instead of sleeping in a vault — and was nearly absent from the GSA hoard.
1895
The 'King of the Morgans.' No authenticated 1895 business strike is known today. Mint ledgers record 12,000; whether they were struck as dated 1895 coins, struck and later melted, or never actually coined remains an open question. The collectible reality is settled either way: a date set runs through one of ~880 proofs.
1894
The lowest-mintage Philadelphia business strike actually obtainable; scarce in every grade and heavily counterfeited by mint-mark removal from 1894-O.
1893-O
Small mintage struck for circulation in the South and used hard; rare above XF and very rare in mint state.
1893-CC
The last Carson City dollar. Most survivors are heavily bag-marked, making clean mint-state examples conditionally rare.
1885-CC
Second-lowest mintage — yet the GSA disbursed 148,285 of them, and an estimated 155,000–168,000 survive, nearly all uncirculated. Only ~2,000–4,000 worn examples exist: in circulated grades this is the king of Morgans, outranking even the 1893-S.
1892-S
The series' great conditional rarity: nearly the whole mintage circulated, AU 'sliders' abound — and the estimates of mint-state survivors are brutal either way: 135–270 (Bowers, 1993) or 1,200 in MS60+ and 64 at MS65+ (PCGS survival estimate, retrieved 2026-08-23), split oddly between near-60 coins and outright gems with almost nothing between.
1903-O
Fewer than ten mint-state pieces were believed to exist in 1962, and the Guide Book listed it at $1,500 — the highest of any Morgan. Then sealed Treasury bags released an estimated 200,000–350,000, and the price touched $7. The standing lesson that mintage alone can't predict availability.
1899
A tiny Philadelphia mintage partly rescued by vault storage — scarce, but not the rarity its number implies. The mirror image of 1892-S.
Survivor counts are ESTIMATED, attributed to PCGS CoinFacts as of 6 September 2026 — an estimate of how many of each issue still exist in any grade, not a count of coins anyone has seen. The mintage beside it is OBSERVED, read from the Mint's own delivery records. Market strips read the eBay Browse API live and are affiliate-tracked; asking prices, not realised sales, and nothing in them reorders this grid. Coins marked “photography pending” await rights-cleared imagery, per house rule.
Hard Money. Hard Numbers. · Not investment advice. Some links pay us a commission — disclosures. Affiliate economics never determine research conclusions or rankings. © 2026 OunceDesk. Every figure classed OBSERVED / DERIVED / ESTIMATED / SPECULATIVE.