Rarest Morgan Silver Dollar 1895

It's a mystery no one has been able to solve. Even though the U.S. Mint indicates they produced 12,000 Morgan Dollars at the Philadelphia mint in 1895 no one, ever, has seen an 1895 Morgan Silver Dollar business strike. They produced some 880 proof coins in 1895 and those have been known to sell at auction in the past. But the 1895 Morgan Dollar? Not one of the report 12,000 produced has ever been seen.

Called the King of the Morgan Dollars the 1895 silver dollar from Philadelphia is the rarest of all Morgan Silver Dollars simply because you can't have one. Scholars have many opinions about what happend to the 12,000 1895 Morgan Dollars minted in Philadelphia. Many believe they were never minted at all and it's just an error in accounting at the Mint. Some believe the coins were actually minted then melted for some reason. A few believe they were minted put on board a ship and lost at sea. While the last seems very romantic there is absolutely no evidence that points in that direction. There are other wildly speculative ideas about what happened but no one knows.

A very small number of proofs exist and have come on the market from time to time. Some 880 of the 1895 Proofs were produced and a few have slipped into circulation by mistake over the years. So you may have a chance at one of them at some point. The New Orleans mint only produced 450,000 of the 1895-O and only 450,000 1895-S were produced at the mint in San Francisco. So even those are on the scarce side and very scarce in mint condition.

Perhaps someday we'll know what happened to the 1895 Morgan Dollars minted at Philadelphia, but for now it's the one Morgan Dollar none of us will ever own.