We love silver! Our branded silver rounds have been around for a few years now and our customers quickly bought up most of our first batch. We release what we have left slowly so as not to sell out, allowing new customers who also want to own a complete collection of our metals the chance to do so. The biggest problem with making another batch of our silver rounds is that we are still a very small company and per unit manufacturing costs are higher than we'd like for small batches making it difficult to compete with the large mints that only produce silver and maybe also gold and can run batches in the millions of rounds. Therefore, instead of going with a new batch of our rounds, we decided to go another direction entirely.
Silver is precious though not particularly rare, at least relative to the rarest elemental metals we've had since we started our company back in 2013, namely ruthenium, rhenium, and osmium. A form of silver that is much more rare are the last regular circulation, 90% silver, silver dollars issued by the the United States Mint, namely the Morgan and Peace silver dollars. Called Constitutional silver, these coins are 90% silver (each containing .7734 grams of silver to be exact) as specified by the U.S. Constitution along with gold to be the legal tender of our country. Paper money from that era included gold and silver certificates which were redeemable for the real thing. Silver certificates were issued from 1878 until 1963 and were redeemable for the specified amount silver until 1968. Gold certificates were issued from 1863 until 1933 when F.D.R. signed Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933 making it illegal to own gold bullion, coins and certificates. The US dollar was still tied to gold in international trade until President Nixon effectively ended the gold standard in 1971, making the US dollar a purely fiat currency ever since. Hence, all paper dollars issued since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, now with no precious metals backing them only retain about 3% of their original purchasing power. Thus, these Constitutional silver dollars are the last of their kind and are the last U.S. dollars that will be able to retain their purchasing power over time as our founding fathers intended. And really, since each of these silver dollars were worth a dollar apiece starting in their first year of issue in 1878, what do you think they should be worth 141 years later?
Certainly millions and millions of these Peace and Morgan silver dollars were issued in their times but many if not most have been melted for their silver content long ago. No one knows for sure how many are left. Our first batch of Morgan Silver Dollars are in extra fine (XF) condition and were minted from 1878 through 1904. Our first batch of Peace Silver Dollars are in almost uncirculated (AU) condition and were minted from 1921 through 1928 and again in 1934 and 1935, although the most common years are 1922 and 1923. The Peace Silver dollars are almost 100 years old and the Morgans are all over 100 years old, some up to 141 years old. We feel that Constitutional silver dollars of this quality are a rare form of silver indeed, one we expect will continue to appreciate in price while paper dollars continue their decline towards intrinsic value. These are certain to be among the most prized pieces of any silver stack or any coin, element, or precious metals collection. Own what's rare!
