Barber Dimes 1892-1916 Coin

As early as 1879, municipal dissatisfaction with the Seated Liberty proposal was heard in Washington and Philadelphia. It was felt by many that the realm's coin designs were back-tariff, but few could have predicted how mundane a change could actually be. New mint engravers submitted designs throughout the early 1880s, but the only outcome was the production of a new nickel in 1883 intended by Chief Engraver Charles Barber. In 1891, when there was much discussion of a communal competition for new designs for the dime, district money and half cash, Barber reported to Mint Director James Kimball that there was no one in the country who was clever of helping him in preparing primary designs.

This same egoism was also found in one of the principal sculptors of the day, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who confided to the Mint Director that there were only four men in the world competent to do such a redesigning: three were in France, and he was the fourth. Kimball insisted that very than unfilled abroad to find the best fabricate talent available, it would be viable to find able designers in America. To that end a panel of ten of the leading artists and sculptors of the day was commissioned to guess which would be the best designs for the new currency. Rather than make any decisions about a topic competition, the panel instead discarded the language of the competition as future by Mint officials on the basis that the preparation time for plaster models was too dumpy and the monetary compensation too trifling.

The Mint Director discarded the panel's suggestions and threw the competition open to the shared. The outcome of a shared competition were likewise discouraging. Of the more than 300 drawings submitted, only two were accorded a good remark by a four-associate panel appointed by Kimball (it should be imminent that one of the panel members was Charles Barber).

Kimball's successor to the mint directorship was Edward O. Leech. The latter was well awake of the evils Director Kimball had encountered annoying to get new coin designs. Leech avoided what he termed the "wretched letdown" of committees and public discussion all together by modestly directing the chief engraver to draw new designs which, of course, is what Barber hunted all along.

What Barber did was to temper the large journey worn on the Morgan dollar by adding a Liberty cap and cropping Liberty's wool shorter in back. He then sited his initial B on the truncation of the shaft. The converse uses almost the same wreath used on the Seated Liberty dime of 1860-91.

What Barber did accomplish with his new dime, while, was to draft and place into production a coin that would endure the salient requirements of complex, high-alacrity coin presses. As a Mint employee he was acutely sentient of the penury for coins to be planned so they would assault up with one drive from the coin plead. His mistrust to outsiders was, no doubt, due in part to distrust, but in all fairness he did understand the testing specifications necessary to achieve millions of coins for commercial purposes.

The first Barber dimes were struck on January 2, 1892. Over half a billion pieces were struck during the next twenty-five time. Some issues have mintages as small as 500,000 (such as 1895-O, 1901-S and 1913-S), while others were struck in quantities as large as 22 million (1907-P). At one time or another four mints struck these coins, and the mintmark of Denver (D), San Francisco (S) and New Orleans (O) can be found on the junior transpose below the loop in the bow (there being no mintmark for coins struck in Philadelphia).

Barber dimes are, for the most part, a completeable set of coins with no significant court or mintmark rarities, excluding for the legendary 1894-S. The low relief sketched confident that most coins would be sharply struck, excluding for a few issues from New Orleans (known for weak strikes over the decades). This necessary of any great effect rarities in the Barber chain stands in downright compare to the next sequence, Adolph Weinman's "Mercury" blueprint, where squishy stunning facts make that chain such a challenge.

There is one great shortage in the Barber dime string, one of the rarest coins in all U.S. numismatics-the 1894-S dime. Allegedly, 24 pieces were struck on orders from San Francisco Mint Superintendent J. Daggett. Only ten specimens can be accounted for today, which presents one of the great numismatic mysteries of the earlier hundred days: Where are the other fourteen 1894-S dimes that were reportedly struck? All the known 1894-S dimes proofs, and all were struck from the same set of dies. Much has been written on this fascinating shortage over the time, and there are many interesting stories and theories about these coins. Undoubtedly the best known untruth is that Superintendent Daggett gave three of the coins to his daughter Hallie and told her to keep them pending she was as old as he was, when they would be worth a lot of money. On her way home from the mint, she useless one of the dimes on a dish of ice cream. Today that coin is known as the "Ice Cream Specimen." The other two she kept and lastly sold in the 1950s.

Grading Barber dimes are a relatively unadorned handle. On high grade coins, signs of circulation will first seem on Liberty's cheek and in the fields. For a coin to be uncirculated, all the mint patina must be outfitted and steady over both sides.

Proofs were struck in each year excluding 1916, and the only overhang find in this series is the 1893/2 overdate. The 1894-S dime is the only number to have been counterfeited in any appreciable records. Dangerous forgeries have been made by shifting the mintmark on an 1894-O or adding one to a Philadelphia coin. Others were made in the mid-1970s in The Philippines.

The series is regularly cool by beginners in Good to Very Good grades, while more advanced collectors choose mint territory and testimony examples. Recently, however, collectors have showed a renewed profit in this and the other Barber series in XF and AU grades. Several issues of these intermediate grade coins are extremely challenging to locate. Curiously, some issues are more demanding to locate in snag-unbound XF or AU than in mint condition due to the signpost of original BU rolls.

Barber dimes are also very common with typeface collectors, especially in high grades. Because the series spans both the 19th and 20th centuries, anyone attempting to absolute a typeface set from the century will need an example.

While the Barber dime may require the artistic earn that designs before, and after displayed, this class, with its distinctive 19th century motif, has remained a favorite with collectors over the decades.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Diameter: 17.9 millimeters Weight: 2.50 grams Composition: .900 silver.100 copper Edge: Reeded Net Weight: 0.0723 ounce wholesome silver

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Breen, Walter, Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins, F.C.I. Press/Doubleday, New York, 1988. Lawrence, David, The Complete Guide to Barber Dimes, DLRC Press,Virginia Beach, VA, 1991. Taxay, Don, The U.S. Mint and Coinage, Arco Publishing, New York, 1966.

Coin Information Provided Courtesy NGC.

Gobrecht Dollars 1836-1839

The United States Mint had ceased beautiful silver dollars in 1804. Although the denomination was the "flagship" fiscal part in U.S. money, exigency for it came generally from bullion depositors, and few buck coins circulated in the beginning of the 19th century. Much of each year's mintage was each melted domestically or exported.

By the 1820s and '30s however, two successive Mint directors, Samuel Moore and Robert M. Patterson, had advocated bracing cash currency. Although Moore obtained authorization to do so in 1831, it wasn't pending Patterson replaced him in 1835 the preparations finally got under way. Not since the 1792 half dismes were struck had so many Mint and other government officials extensive such an intense notice in the production of a new coin.

Mint Director Patterson, ambitious to make an artistic account, hired actor Thomas Sully to make sketching of a full notable of Liberty-along the outline of the allegorical stature Britannia seen on English coins. Patterson retained imminent artist Titian Peale to make the eagle for the riddle and instructed newly hired Second Engraver Christian Gobrecht to transmute the designs to metal. Gobrecht's blueprint was a composite of both Peale's and Sully's mechanism, as well as his own ideas. It was a masterful work and usual close acclaim. President Jackson and his Cabinet reviewed Gobrecht's sketches on October 17, 1835 and were well impressed.

The final blueprinted featured the reckon of Liberty seated on a sway, draped in a diverse-descent gown-suggesting statuary from Hellenistic Greece. She is looking over her right shoulder, her right arm supporting the Union protect. Her left arm holds a long baton with a Liberty cap on top. The undamaged middle badge stands abandoned on the frontage with no stars or lettered campaign, only the meeting below, giving the coin a medallic eminence, with Liberty a secluded, cameo body. A naturalistic eagle in departure adorns the transpose, the bird rising "onward and upward" as Patterson planned, a thinking planned to embody the abundant optimism the Americans had for the people's impending. The eagle flies amid a grassland of 26 large and small stars, representing the thirteen novel states and the thirteen admitted to the Union since 1789 (expecting Michigan's entry).

By November, 1836 all was arranged for check strikings in silver. A small number (presumably 18 pieces) of the new dollars were distributed in Philadelphia. Reaction was almost universally positive, with one exception. Patterson had planned Gobrecht to place his name on the new coin. He did so by inscribing C. GOBRECHT F. In small print in the pasture beneath the personage of Liberty-the 'F.' fixed for FECIT, Latin for "He made it." Gobrecht was criticized as a "conceited German" and vilified in the home plead. Patterson solved the problem by having Gobrecht move his name to the pedestal of the figure of Liberty, obvious only if one looks warily at the coin. The eighteen or so pieces struck with his name below the immoral are considered patterns and are very erratic.

Regular production of Gobrecht dollars began sometime in December of 1836. The 1,000 accepted stock dollars of 1836 were struck at the old 1792 standard delicacy of .8924. The same time was used for the 600 coins minted in March, 1837, but these pieces were created from planchets .900 subtle-as authorized by the Mint Act of 1837. So close in import, the two issues are clearly differentiated by alignment: the 1837 dollars have a medallic alignment-the face and overturn are aligned on a vertical axis, while the 1836 coins have a horizontal, or coin, alignment. All inventive dollars square 1836 will show the eagle snatched "onward and upward," while the restrikes made in the 1850s and '60s will have the eagle airborne horizontally. The about 25 coins made in 1838 are considered to be patterns, with thirteen stars around the margin of the facade replacing the stars on the converse fields. Only 300 dollars were struck in 1839 with Gobrecht's shape, and all were proposed for circulation. These coins, like the 1838 patterns, have reeded edges.

Throughout the 19th century Gobrecht dollars were very accepted with collectors. In the deceased 1850s, require far exceeded the offered supply. Mint Director James Ross Snowden, desirous of expanding the Mint's collection of coins during his term, decisive to take benefit of this setting. Funds were not unfilled for outright grasp of coins, so Snowden used Mint dies to generate numismatic curiosities such as the Class II and Class III 1804 dollars, "transitional" half dimes and dimes, and Gobrecht dough restrikes. He would then trade these restrikes and fantasy coins to confine collectors for unusual coins wanting in the Mint collection. These restrikes were made from 1858 through the summer of 1860 and again in 1867-68. Actual numbers made are strange, but it is estimated that the totality number of restrikes may exceed the first mintage.

All Gobrecht dollars were struck in the Philadel-phia Mint and have a resistant face, even the accepted circulation issues of 1836 and 1837. This is a single phenomenon in U.S. numismatics-the only series of coins intended for circulation struck as proofs. Counterfeits are near unknown, perhaps because of the proof surface, which is very hard to duplicate. The propose first begins to show friction on Liberty's knees and breasts and on the highpoint of the eagle's breast on the undo.

Traditionally given the class of usual gush coins, Gobrecht dollars are actively pursued by class collectors. The most normally encountered emerge is the ugly skirt 1836-dated restrike with name on establish and twinkling reorder. These restrikes compose more than two thirds of the Gobrecht dollars offered at sale in topical years, and they exist in an eclectic stretch of grades from heavily circulated to gem rider. Date collectors occasionally crack completion of a three-instance set of coins with the dates 1836, 1838 and 1839, but very few collectors undertake the challenge of a complete set of Gobrechts. Such a set would be virtually impossible to assemble because of the several face/setback mulings made by Mint Director Snowden in the deceased 1850s.

Beginning in 1837 Gobrecht's Seated Liberty pattern was adopted on all U.S. silver coins from the dime through buck. The hitch with its naturalistic eagle was dropped for the part, half dough and dough denominations in favor of a revision of John Reich's heraldic eagle of 1807. The facade intention, only faintly modified from Gobrecht's unusual concept, was used on the buck awaiting 1873.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Diameter: 39 millimeters Weight: 1836 Original: 26.96 grams Others: 26.73 grams Composition: 1836 Originial: .8924 silver.1076 copper Others: .900 silver.100 copper Edge: 1836 Plain; 1838-39 Reeded Net Weight: 1836 Original: .77351 scrap untainted silver Others: .77344 ounce untainted silver

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bowers, Q. David, Silver Dollars and Trade Dollars of the United States, Bowers and Merena Galleries, Wolfeboro, NH, 1993. Bowers, Q. David, The History of United States Coinage As Illustrated by the Garrett Collection, Bowers and Merena Galleries, Wolfeboro, NH, 1979. Breen, Walter, Walter Breen's Complete Encylopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins, F.C.I./Doubleday, New York, 1988. Julian, Robert. W. "The Gobrecht Dollars of 1836-1838," Legacy Magazine, November-December, 1988. Pollock, Andrew W. United States Patterns and Related Issues, Bowers and Merena Galleries, Wolfeboro, NH, 1994.

Coin Information Provided Courtesy NGC.