Owner Comments:
An attractive original example of this historic, popular, yet extremely challenging San Francisco Mint silver dollar issue. Both sides are layered in rich apricot colored patina. Well struck with just a touch of obverse high point wear and a few reed marks in the reverse field. Virtually all 1859-S silver dollars are softly struck, especially on the eagle's right leg and the top of its right wing. This piece is rare being fully struck throughout both the obverse and reverse. Die State a/b is the early state of the OC-1 pairing with strong re-punching at the bases of the digits 18 in the date.
Among Liberty Seated dollars of the No Motto type, the 1859-S is an isolated issue as a product of the San Francisco Mint with most examples produced for a single purpose. Of the 20,000 pieces struck, the first 15,000 coins delivered (on May 11) were paid out to bullion depositors who fed the coins into the export trade. Indeed, the San Francisco-based firm of Bolton, Barren & Co. acquired 8,985 of these coins expressly for use in the China trade. Those examples that went overseas were invariably lost through melting. Fortunately for today's collectors, the additional 5,000 pieces (delivered in July), while also paid out to bullion depositors, were retained stateside and released into circulation on the West Coast, where a seemingly insatiable demand for circulating gold and silver resulted in heavy commercial use for these coins. Survivors of that delivery, and they are few, are usually well worn, often impaired, and constitute the majority of 1859-S silver dollars obtainable today.
Given the manner in which this issue was distributed, combined with a lack of contemporary numismatic demand, it should come as no surprise that the 1859-S is very scarce in all grades, and rare in problem free and fully original EF, AU and Mint State condition. This is one of the nicest circulated examples this collector has ever seen and, in fact, it is more appealing than many pieces that have been certified in the various MS grades.