1854 Liberty Seated Silver Dollar. OC-1. Rarity-3+. Repunched Date. AU-55 (PCGS). A highly desirable Choice AU example of this key date Liberty Seated issue. Pretty peripheral toning in iridescent cobalt blue and reddish-gold yields to lighter golden tinting toward the centers. The surfaces are lustrous for the grade with a sharply executed strike.The 1854 is one in a long line of Philadelphia Mint silver dollar issues beginning with the 1850 and continuing through the end of the Liberty Seated series in 1873 that were made almost exclusively for use in the export trade. The mintage of 33,140 circulation strikes that year was achieved using silver bullion obtained from Mexico and deposited with the Mint for coinage into dollars. Since the Act of February 21, 1853, did not reduce the weight of the silver dollar, the bullion value of these coins continued to exceed their face value. Ten thousand examples were shipped to San Francisco from Philadelphia on November 11, 1854, and sent to China by merchants in San Francisco in exchange for goods such as tea and silk. These and other exported coins were almost all subsequently melted. While some 1854 silver dollars were held domestically as part of bullion reserves, many of those also succumbed to melting within the United States, for example when the Mint destroyed tens of thousands of silver dollars acquired through the New York Sub-Treasury to provide bullion for the heavy subsidiary silver coinage of 1861 and early 1862.With an extant population of just 130 to 170 coins in circulated grades (per Q. David Bowers, 2016), the 1854 is the rarest Philadelphia Mint Liberty Seated dollar after the legendary 1851 and 1852. Choice About Uncirculated examples are particularly elusive and usually appear at auction only once in a very long while. Clearly we anticipate strong competition for this piece among astute collectors specializing in both Liberty Seated coinage and silver dollars. PCGS# 6942. NGC ID: 24YT.
