Why this issue matters
The king of the business strikes. 100,000 minted — the lowest in the series — in the depression year that closed Carson City, shipped into a cash-hungry West that used every coin hard. No sealed bags of 1893-S ever turned up in the Treasury releases. What was struck, circulated; what circulated, wore.
Rarity & survival
PCGS estimates roughly 9,900 survivors across all grades (Bowers' range: 6,000–12,000; some research argues for as many as 25,000) — and only about 123 in mint state, with ~18 at MS65 or better. Scarce in Good and climbing relentlessly from there: mid-grade examples are five-figure coins, and mint-state pieces anchor major auctions. The ultimate demonstration that in Morgans, the absence of a hoard matters as much as the mintage.
Collector values
We don't publish a price table for this issue yet — numismatic values require sourced market observations with provenance, and we won't invent them. The realized-market architecture (per-grade medians, ranges and trends from authorized sale data) is built and waiting on data; see methodology. Until then: the melt value above is the floor, and the rarity discussion tells you which side of "far above melt" this issue lives on.
Grading this issue
The typical survivor is VG–Fine with honest, even wear. Learn the genuine coin's markers before shopping (specialists check die characteristics like the date position and a tiny die line in Liberty's cap known to the reference literature). At every grade, third-party certification is effectively mandatory — raw 1893-S dollars offered online are presumed fake until proven otherwise.
Authentication
The most counterfeited Morgan, full stop: altered 1893-P coins (an S soldered on), removed-and-replaced marks, cast fakes, struck fakes from false dies, and counterfeit slabs around all of the above. Buy certified, verify the certification number with the grading service, and treat any bargain as the trap it is.
History
1893: the Panic hit, silver crashed, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed in November, and Carson City struck its last coin. The 1893-S — San Francisco's tiny contribution to that grim year — became the series' king almost by accident: the wrong mintage in the wrong year in the right direction of history.