1860-O LIBERTY SEATED S$1, NO MOTTO MS65

GEM SATIN WHITE SURFACES. VITUALLY MARK FREE. JUST THREE MS65+ COINS GRADED HIGHER AT PCGS. The 1860-O is the last of only four New Orleans Mint issues in the Seated Dollar series. Struck during a time when Silver Dollars did not circulate domestically, most of the 515,000 coins produced were probably used in the United States' export trade. Several thousand examples, however, remained stateside and probably slipped into circulation in the 1870s when their bullion value dropped below their face value. This accounts for the multitide of circulated examples in today's market. The 1860-O is also a relatively plentiful coin in lower Mint State grades. When contemporary citizens and numismatists exchanged large numbers of Silver Certificates for Silver Dollars with the Treasury Department in the early 1960s, at least one 1,000-coin bag of Mint State 1860-O Seated Dollars came to light. While Walter Breen believes that 6,000 Mint State examples were discovered during the "Great Treasury Raid of 1962-1964," the exact number of coins was not recorded at that time. It is likely that the total number of 1860-O Seated Dollars that the Treasury Department released is somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 pieces. Most of these hoard coins are heavily abraded and grade MS-60, MS-61 or MS-62. The nicer examples have been certified MS-63 by PCGS and NGC. Given the rarity of most other No Motto Seated Dollars in Mint State, even BU examples of the 1860-O are extremely important coins for high-grade type purposes.