Collecting Preferences Since 1970

Since 1970, trade dollars have increased in popularity. This began in earnest in the mid-1970s when investment writers and others began to take note of how rare certain silver dollars (in particular) and other coins were in various levels of Uncirculated condition. Researchers took notice that a coin could be common in one grade and a rarity in another.

The investment boom of the late 1970s, which peaked in March 1980, saw great activity in Mint State and Proof trade dollars (the only grades said to be of "investment quality" by sage advisors). Prices doubled and redoubled. In the early 1980s prices fell, only to begin an upward ascent in 1983-1984, culminating in 1989, when the prices of MS-65 and Proof-65 coins in particular ascended to what many considered to be astronomical heights. The availability of trade dollars (and other coins) in certified plastic holders ("slabs") marked with the date and grade seemed to give the coins a commodity-type status suitable for buying and selling in investment circles. Investors from Wall Street and elsewhere failed to materialize, at least in the numbers hoped for, and prices fell. By 1992, prices for many common date trade dollars in higher grades were fractions of their 1989-1990 highs.

In the meantime, much fertile numismatic soil was being plowed by the Liberty Seated Collectors Club (and its publication The Gobrecht Journal) and by individual numismatists who thought the trade dollar worthy of detailed historical or technical study. Walter Breen’s Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins, published by Doubleday in 1988, was issued with a $75 cover price (later raised to $100), but despite this figure, over 10,000 copies reached buyers, including over 8,500 sold by Bowers and Merena Galleries. This book, by one of America’s most accomplished numismatic scholars, listed coins not only by dates and mintmarks, but by repunched dates and other technical varieties as well, for trade dollars and all other U.S. series.

In the present market of the early 1990s, the buyer will find much more information available on trade dollars than ever before, will find prices (especially of high grade coins) to be lower than during the late 1980s, and will find more enthusiasm among numismatists for the series than at any other time in the history of our hobby.