By Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) ……
The United States Mint had high hopes when it introduced the Trade dollar in 1873. Silver miners believed that the Chinese market held incredible potential, but it never lived up to expectations. Millions of Trade dollars also found their way into circulation in the U.S. at a time when silver values had plummeted, earning the American public’s scorn.
The Trade dollar’s six-year run of business strikes ended ingloriously when the U.S. Congress revoked the coin’s legal-tender status in 1876 and ordered that only enough be produced for international trade. The Treasury Secretary terminated the production of business strikes in early 1878, and only Proofs were made for several years. The final year, 1885, saw a mere five Proofs produced for a Mint employee, and these are now counted among the greatest rarities in U.S. numismatics.
Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) recently received two purported 1878 Trade dollars, one with the common “S” mintmark and another with the “CC” mintmark (as the rarest business strike, the 1878-CC has a mintage of 97,000 pieces, many of which likely were melted).
The submitted dollars have an unnatural luster, which is especially evident on the 1878-CC. The denticles are also rather rough. Both coins exhibit repeating depressions and marks, including several in the fields around Lady Liberty. This indicates that both obverses were struck by the same counterfeit die – which itself was based on a genuine dollar with these imperfections. These coins were supposedly struck at different Mint facilities, and they would not pick up the same set of contact marks from circulation.
While a genuine 1878-CC is worth thousands of dollars in About Uncirculated, a genuine 1878-S is still worth hundreds of dollars in the same grade range, providing plenty of incentive for a counterfeiter.
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