Collecting Preferences 1951-1970

After about 1950, collecting trade dollars by date and mintmark became popular. Quite a few numismatists aspired to own one of each Proof date from 1873 to 1883. A few well-moneyed buyers sought the rare 1884 and 1885, whose acquisition was more a matter of availability than price.

In the 1950s the foremost collector and student of trade dollars was John M. Willem, a New York gentleman who became interested in the denomination but was frustrated because virtually nothing on the denomination was available in popular reference books. Somewhere in his travels, Willem encountered a copy of Fractional Money, a book by Neil Carothers, professor of economics and director of the College of Business Administration, Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania. Published in 1930, the volume was subtitled "A history of small coins and fractional paper currency of the United States." Within the book’s red cloth covers Willem encountered a concisely-stated raison d’être of the trade dollar, but no numismatic information concerning it. On page 177 he found this challenging footnote: "There is no satisfactory history of the trade dollar."

Willem set about to remedy this omission.

I remember John M. Willem as a student of history first and a numismatist second. That is, he was not concerned with this variety or that in my coin inventory in the 1950s, but asked if I had any technical information on the trade dollar, or any unusual facts, which (I was sorry to tell him) I did not. Nor, apparently did many others. The author was on his own.

He began a relentless search through nineteenth century legislative data, Mint reports, contemporary newspapers, economic and banking journals, and other archives, and by 1959 had amassed a wealth of information. His research findings were analyzed, distilled, surrounded with an excellent text, and published in 1959 as a book, The U.S. Trade Dollar. The study was well received but achieved only a limited circulation, due to the lack of widespread interest in the trade dollar denomination.

Over the next several years Willem gathered additional information, corrected errors, and, in 1965, made an arrangement with Kenneth E. Bressett, of the Whitman Publishing Company, to take over the production of a new edition. This was an era of growth in the rare coin business, and Whitman was expanding in several directions. To its best-selling references, The Handbook of U.S. Coins (published since 1941) and A Guide Book of U.S. Coins (published since 1946; first edition postdated 1947), Whitman added many new products, including the memorable but, as it turned out, short-lived, Whitman Numismatic Journal. Willem’s The United States Trade Dollar was caught up in this activity and was distributed along with other Whitman products.

To quote Willem’s introduction to his book:

The writing and assembly of the contents of this book is directly the result of a statement by Neil Carothers in his excellent book Fractional Money, that ‘There is no satisfactory history of the trade dollar.’ This challenge was too much to ignore by one whose appetite had only been whetted by such isolated references to the trade dollar as appeared in writings dedicated to other subjects. Whether this work is a satisfactory history of an anomalous coin, or as satisfactory as distance in years will permit, the reader will have to judge for himself.

The Willem work has stood the test of time, and today, although it is out of print, it remains the standard authority on the history of the trade dollar. Let us hope it again becomes available.