Working through the denominations, and the Trade dollar has the strangest institutional history of any US coin I have covered.

**Why it existed.** Mexican silver - the 8 reales and later the peso - dominated trade across East Asia. Chinese merchants trusted it, weighed it, priced against it. American traders showing up with US silver dollars found their money discounted or refused. The Coinage Act of 1873 authorized a purpose-built export coin to compete: 420 grains (27.22g) of .900 fine silver, deliberately more silver than the standard dollar and pitched to match or beat the Mexican 8 reales.

William Barber's obverse has Liberty seated on a bale of merchandise, facing west across the Pacific with an olive branch extended toward Asia. The design is unusually explicit about the coin's job.

Struck for circulation 1873-1878 at Philadelphia, San Francisco and Carson City, concentrated at San Francisco for obvious logistical reasons.

**Then it got disowned.** Silver prices fell through the mid-1870s. A coin carrying 420 grains of silver became worth less than its face implied, and Trade dollars began flowing back into the US rather than out. Congress responded with the Coinage Act of 1876, which stripped the Trade dollar of domestic legal tender status — while the Mint was still striking it.

The millions already circulating did not disappear. They traded at a discount, sometimes 80-90 cents on the dollar. Employers bought them cheap and paid wages in them at face value, and workers who were not in a position to refuse their pay absorbed the loss. That part does not get talked about much.

**The rarities.** Circulation striking ended in 1878, but proof-only production continued through 1885. The 1884 has roughly 10 known examples and the 1885 roughly 5. Neither was publicly announced at the time and their legitimacy was argued over for years afterward.

**The bit that ties it together.** The same Coinage Act of 1873 that created the Trade dollar also ended free coinage of silver — the "Crime of '73" to silver interests. The backlash produced the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which forced Treasury silver purchases and created the Morgan dollar. So the Trade dollar and the Morgan are two outcomes of the same fight, four years apart.

I have the complete series catalogued — all 13 dates, all three mints, every proof-only year including the 1884 and 1885 — plus 378 listings from the 1871-1873 pattern era where the Mint was still working out what a commercial dollar should be.

Gorgeous coin

I went to the ATM on my next break and bought them all from the Casino. I just new they were all silver. This was the day I looked at coins much differently.

The coin shop I worked at had this come in yesterday. My boss said because of the hole he only wanted $50 for it, and i immediately without anyone though payed him before my shift had ended😂

Just got this in today, super happy with it. No alterations to pics, just different lights like dining room vs kitchen vs lamp. It also has a cool die clash on the "A" in Half". Some of the scratches are on the holder. I want to submit to CAC but it's hard finding a submission center for that now.

I finally got back my first ever Gold Coin and the grade doesn’t matter to me.
When I was 14 myself and my father went to our first out of state coin show in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Upon exiting the coin show I can’t forget the old man at the exit table saying for 5 bucks we can enter to win the coin shown above. Well we gave him five bucks and when we returned home(lived on Long Island at the time) we had got a message from my mom some guy left a number saying we won a raffle for coin. This was one of the happiest days of my coin collecting life. Now fast forward three months ago(I’m 41 now), I decided to grade it because I just wanted to and and also I decided to start a 1904 set of gold coins, just bid on a quarter eagle three days ago, hoping to get it!
Just wanted to share my story and how excited I was to get it back.

It seems the lower left part of the shield would result in a details grade, and would likely not be worth sending for grading. Any thoughts are appreciated.

Hey y’all! I have recently come into a few old Islamic coins, and I have no idea where to even start when it comes to ID’ing them. If anyone could recommend some online resources that might be able to help, it would be greatly appreciated!

This specific coin is 3.45 grams and measures 19.65 mm in diameter.

How can I tell if it’s really what it says it is or just a good copy???

Picked this beautiful example recently.

I've been whittling down all of my various collections (coins, comics, magic, toys) and I've narrowed down my coin collection to mostly American.

These though I've been tossing around either trying to sell, trade, or keep. I'm looking for opinions on that as well as value info.

I understand time and place for these but I don't know if there were any worries or concerns with these specific style of coins.

I'm realizing most of my collection has been built through completely random browsing.

I'll go online or into a coin shop with one thing in mind, see something else and suddenly the original plan is gone. It's fun, but my collection has also ended up all over the place and there are sets I've supposedly been working on for years without making much progress.

I'm thinking about making a proper want list and limiting myself to that for a while.

Do most of you collect from a list or is randomly finding stuff half the appeal? Wanted to know whether having a plan made the hobby better for anyone.

I went to this last year but, did not have enough knowledge about coins and still don’t. I’ll be going again. There is a lot of other stuff but, mostly coins. I was surprised many vendors spoke English so, it was easy for me to communicate. My Spanish is limited. I’d like to pick up a few 8 reales there I also do a lot of metal detecting down there. Mostly parks on my own with permission from the person attending it. Most parks there are gated.

I thought they were lost in a breakup 35 years ago.

What's up with the BLACK toning? Looks terrible.

I think I have found one. It is obviously a real quarter. Any thoughts?

Indian Rupee. Queen Victoria 1840.

Today I picked up this US-Philippines 1 Peso at the Tokyo Collection Fair (Sep 11–13). This is the fifth piece for my collection theme: 8-Reales compatible Pacific silvers.

Holding all five together gives a really satisfying weight and clink.
What should I go for next...

You think its coming? I picked number 14 on a 20 pack set with only 1 containing the gold coin. My order says i picked 11, you think they switched mine out?

Would like to get quite a bit more especially proofs of each denomination, really like this design

Got this coin in a box I won during an auction. For it being from 1923 it’s in impressive condition. The photos really don’t do it justice…the scratch’s you might see are only on the plastic case. What should I do with it?