1878-S Morgan Silver Dollar PCGS MS63

Transporting Morgan Dollars prior to 1878

The only viable way of shipping goods from the East coast to California prior to the connection of rails on the Transcontinental Railway in 1869 was by ship across thousands of miles of open water. Even after the golden spike was driven in Utah in 1869, rail transportation was slow and dangerous across the Great Plains and the largely unexplored region west of the Rocky Mountains.

Minting silver dollars in Philadelphia and shipping them to California was not an option since the metal was in the West and the mint was near the Atlantic coast. San Francisco was challenged to fulfill a decent share of the Bland-Allison Act, which required monetizing millions of dollars worth of silver into silver dollars, many of which would be shipped for the orient for global trade in luxury goods.

Why so many 1878-S Morgan Dollars?

1878 was the first year of Morgan Dollar mintage, but it was not the first mass-scale production of dollar coins in San Francisco. For roughly five years the San Francisco had been ramping-up production of Trade Dollars to be shipped to the orient for luxury goods, and hit a record pace of 9.5 million coins in 1877, even though the government had already ordered the discontinuation of the series. 1878 saw another 4.1 million Trade dollars produced in San Francisco (they still had not received the memo to stop), and with the 9.7 million Morgan Dollars produced, it broke the ten-million silver dollar barrier for the first time ever.

Trade in the orient had been growing for years, and the US government wanted their silver used in that commercial venture. Minting silver dollars by the millions was required to make sure that happened, and minting them in San Francisco was necessary to seeing timely shipment to the epicenter of the boom.

Why graded 1878-S Morgan Dollars?

This coin is graded MS63 by the Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS), a publicly traded company with a staff of experts in the industry which is highly respected across the industry for its expertise at grading coins. The grade MS63 means that this coin has no wear from circulation, but has a moderate amount of contact marks from having been stored in a bag for a number of years.

MS63 is a respectable grade for a coin that's over 150 years old, and it represents a very affordable way to own one of these gems of history in a full-details grade with original mint luster!