Lot 725
1853 Liberty Seated Quarter Dollar. Recut date, no arrows or rays. AU-50. Light hairlines from a cleaning, and still a bit too bright for its age. There is an unimportant drift mark on Liberty's knee from impurities in the silver. The date is recut, as seen on all of this tiny mintage, the surfaces are lustrous and pleasing, without serious detriment or problem. If left out to tone, this coin would soon look a lot more natural and appealing.
In early 1853 coining silver had become futile, it was profitable to get silver coins at face value, melt them, sell them in the market at over face value as the price of silver had risen relative to the drop in the price of gold (that little gold discovery in California in 1849 affected prices drastically). No doubt a few wise people bought coins from the mint, melted them and resold the same silver to the mint at a profit. As usual, after a few years and a few million squandered from taxpayers pockets, a law was passed reducing the amount of silver in subsidiary coinage (half dimes to half dollars) to where the silver required to coin these less than a dollar denominations was now worth less than the face value of the coin. Curiously, the standard was not reduced for the silver dollars, as it was mandated by law at a fixed amount of 412.5 grains per dollar. As usual, the government got around their own law, they simply didn't strike many silver dollars in the 1850s, until the price of silver had fallen to a level that allowed silver dollars to circulate without being melted and resold to the mint.
Here is one of the very tail end coins struck just while the law was being passed reducing the silver content in quarters from 103 and 1/8 grains to 96 grains in February of 1853.
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| Realized $1,783 |
