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A Guide to Collecting the Early U.S. Silver Dollars by Date and Major Design Type, Part 3
1797 Dollars
With a reported mintage of 7,776 and an estimated number of surviving coins at 3,500 pieces, the official mintage for the 1797 dollars is clearly wrong. Dave Bowers has estimated that the actual mintage of 1797 dollars was 60,000. Many, if not all, of those coins were delivered in 1798.
“Red Book” varieties of 1797 dollars include pieces with large and small reverse lettering, and coins with either the 9 (right side) X 7 (left side) or 10 X 6 obverse star configurations. The variety with 9 X 7 stars and small letters on the reverse is a scare coin with only 350 survivors.
1798 Dollars
There were two reverse designs issued in 1798. At the beginning of the year, the Small Eagle, introduced in 1795, appeared on the reverse. Later in the year, a Heraldic Eagle, similar to the one in the Great Seal of the United States, replaced it. “The Red Book” only provides a combined mintage for the two types of 327,536 coins. Dave Bowers has estimated that the combined mintage was lower and split the total at 35,000 for the Small Eagle reverse and 200,000 for the Heraldic Eagle coins.
The Small Eagle variety is a scarce coin with an estimated 1,350 survivors. There are two die varieties, one with 13 stars on the obverse and second with 15 stars.[1] The 15 star coin with an estimated 500 survivors is scarcer.
There are number of varieties of the Heraldic Eagle type. There are “9”s with and without a knob on the point of the figure. There are differences in the number vertical stripes in the vertical lines on the shield on the reverse. Some of these sub varieties are very scarce, but there are plenty of examples of the common varieties to provide date collectors with a reasonably priced coin. Adding up all of the varieties listed in “Coin Facts,” the estimated number of survivors is 6,905.
1799
Dollars
The 1799 Bust Dollar is the most common date in the early dollar set. This is not surprising because the reports show that the dollar was the only silver coin the mint issued that year. David Bowers has lowered the mintage estimate from 423,515 to 395,000. Although there are a couple of scarce to rare varieties, there are many “generic” examples available for date collectors.
This marks the first year that mint created an overdate date, 1799 over 8, in the early dollar series. It must be assumed that those coins were struck in 1799. Mint procedures indicate that overdate dies are almost always those that had not been hardened or used to strike coins previously. Pre-hardened dies were still in the die preparation process, and therefore could be modified.
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