News to Me
How Research and Marketing Led To Numismatic Records
How does a coin go from a face value of $1 to a record-setting auction bid of $10,061,875? Yes, rarity, historical significance, and demand are crucial elements, but it also involved numismatic scholarship and effective promotion and marketing in this headline-making case.
The only 1794 Flowing Hair silver dollar certified as a special strike, PCGS SP66, is believed by many of the hobby’s respected experts to probably be the first dollar denomination coin struck in silver by the young United States
Mint. There are perhaps only about
150 surviving examples of 1794-dated dollars out of 1,758 delivered by Mint Director David Rittenhouse. Each is important. They symbolically represented the financial independence of the recently self-governing United States.
For decades, there was conjecture that this 1794 silver dollar could be the first made, but it took perseverance by one of the coin’s owners and the concurring opinions of a dozen heavy-hitter numismatists to bolster that view.
The earliest confirmed private owner of the carefully preserved coin was Virgil Brand, a late 19th and early 20th century Chicago brewery owner and known collector-hoarder. Brand acquired over 300,000 coins before his 1926 death. Another owner was Fort Worth, Texas newspaper publisher Amon G. Carter, Jr. When Stack’s sold the Carter family coin, in 1984, the lot description stated: “It is perfectly conceivable that this coin was the very first 1794 Silver Dollar struck!”
Absolutely certain it was a very special coin, Steven L. Contursi of
Rare Coin Wholesalers in Orange
County, California, purchased it in a private transaction in 2003.
“This coin is to our economy and international trade what the Declaration of Independence was to our country’s freedom: a significant piece of history and a national treasure,” Contursi declared.
For the next year, Contursi diligently studied it, compared it side-by-side with the 1794-dated copper die trial dollar in the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and let respected early American coinage experts closely examine it. He happily also exhibited the coin around the country.
David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service, declared it a specimen strike. “It made my heart thump… It is easy to surmise that this is probably the first dollar struck in the U.S.”
Researcher Martin Logies, the author of The Flowing Hair Silver Dollar of 1794, stated: “Of all the rarities I have seen or heard of, there is no doubt in my mind that this is the single most important of all, the very first silver dollar.” In 2010, Logies purchased the coin from Contursi for a record-setting $7.85 million.
In 2013, Laura Sperber of Legend Numismatics in New Jersey set another record, $10,061,875, to buy the acclaimed coin for business executive Bruce Morelan who proudly exhibited it in the U.S. and Europe. When it failed to meet a minimum bid in an October 2020 auction, he stated: “I’m actually relieved and ecstatic it’s still in my collection.”
Sometimes a crucial part of a coin’s overall value is its compelling backstory.