1885 Morgan Silver Dollar. MS-66 DMPL (PCGS). CAC.Brilliant untoned surfaces allow ready appreciation of intense contrast between frosty design elements and deeply mirrored fields. The strike is full throughout, and the surfaces are expectably smooth for the premium Gem rating assigned by PCGS. The Philadelphia Mint delivered 17,787,000 circulation strike silver dollars in 1885, one of the more generous totals in the Morgan series. Thousands of these coins remained in federal storage until released by the Treasury Department from the 1930s through the early 1960s. Q. David Bowers (1993) notes that the year 1954 saw a particularly large dispersal of this issue. With many of these coins finding their way into numismatic hands, the 1885 is the most plentiful pre-1921 Philadelphia Mint Morgan dollar in Mint State after only the 1886 and 1887. Far rarer in the finest grades than early San Francisco Mint issues such as the 1880-S and 1881-S, however, the 1885 is particularly elusive in Gem Deep Mirror Prooflike, as here.
