THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICA’S FIRST BULLION COIN

THE TRADE DOLLAR WAS, for many years, a stepchild in American numismatics. Few collectors were actively involved in acquiring these coins and little was known about the coinage history of this era. In the past few years all of this has changed and at present there is strong interest in the series of Trade dollars. It all began in the late 1850s.

Although there had been a shortage of silver coins in the early 1850s, a law of February 1853 solved this problem by lowering the weights of the minor silver coins so that they would not be bought up by bullion dealers and melted. The dollar was a special case, however, as the public could still bring in silver bullion in exchange for this denomination; minor coins were on government account only.

Despite the heavy silver coinages of the 1850s, there were no native silver mines of importance and most of the bullion came from melting down foreign coins, especially those struck in Mexico under the Spanish as well as the independent government of that country. Some silver did come as a by-product of Western gold mining but it was of little practical importance.

All of this changed dramatically in 1859 when major silver strikes were made in what is now Nevada. The Comstock Lode produced enormous amounts of silver and other mines were nearly