What gives designer George T. Morgan's masterpiece such mystique and staying power?

I can remember the Saturday morning 56 years ago when I received a bright new 1921S Morgan Dollar as payment for a months delivery of Seattle morning newspaper, "The Post Intelligence".

For me it was the beginning of a life long love affair. With a Morgan Silver Dollar in your pocket, you had real buying power. You could get ten (meal size) banana splits at the local drug store. In those days every drug store had a soda fountain. You could buy thirty Mounds or Mars candy bars, you could get twenty-five bus tokens, each with a transfer ticket. You could take the Cla-Cla (a streamline ferry boat) to the many small islands in the Puget Sound area. If you did not have a car (bikes went free) you could purchase a punch ticket for 10 rides to these exotic islands. On such a ride you could see seals, sea lions, dolphins, and occasionally a whale.

So a Morgan Dollar above all else gave you independence and freedom. In today's world of paper money you can't even buy a cup of coffee for a dollar. In those days with a couple of Morgans in your pocket made you king of the hill.

In those days you could trade 2 used Morgan Dollars for one bright shinny uncirculated Morgan at the local coin, stamp, and candy store. Before the government hauled him off for being a German, he would let us go through new rolls of 1878's to 1904's and pick the ones we liked. I always liked the ones that had mirror-like fields and highly frosted heads and eagles. In fact, he had rolls of them and it was a hard choice to pick one. No matter which one you picked, the kindly old German always said, "You got der best one out of der roll".

In those days about a third of the neighborhood kids (boys) had coin collections and we were always trading and trying to get the best of each other. Our coin dealer said there were over one million kids collecting coins in the U.S. Perhaps that's one of the reasons we still have reasonable prices and quality Morgans around today. I know that most of the better Morgans I buy at the store and over the Web were passed down from the parents and grandparents.

Thousands of bags of both circulated and uncirculated coins laid around in bank vaults around the U.S. Women did the shopping and the last thing they wanted or needed was a couple of heavy rolls of Morgans in their purse to lug around. They liked $1.00 to $20.00 bills. In fact, my mother would not take Morgans in change. So that's another reason they are still around in abundant supply in common dates.

In those days, every kid had a piggy bank. Piggy banks came in every shape and form. In fact, I had a collection of banks. Businesses of various types used them as advertising vehicles. This was before the days of plastic and most banks were cast iron and the bigger they were the heavier they were.

My dad owned an oil burner manufacturing plant and oil burners were made out of cast iron. The manufacturing plant had a very large foundry and they did job shop work such as hand grenade casings, pistons, and crank shafts for was engines and private contracts for different types of cast iron advertising banks. The plant operated 7 days a week, 24 hours a day during the war years.

One of the local companies was making parts for tanks and they had a bunch of tank banks made to promote their business. After school sometimes I would go down to the plant and my dad would give me clean up jobs. One day I was sweeping out the drafting room when Paul Stevens called me over to his desk and showed me a wooden model about a foot long of a tank with a big gun. You could lift up the hatch and drop a silver dollar in the slot under the hatch.

I had to have one to hold my collection of silver dollars so I raced off to find my dad and make a labor deal to get one.

I told him I would work for 10 hours to get one and he started laughing and said the tanks cost $5.00 to make and they sold them to the tank part company for $10.00 each and in as much as I only made .25 cents an hour, I would have to trade at least 40 hours of work for one. A deal was finally struck for the rough unfinished castings it took to make the tank for 20 hours of work. by the time I finished the 20 hours of work, the little tanks were coming out of the foundry and I spent 3 months of spare time filing and sand papering the casting making to ready for paint. I lovingly finished it with several coast of olive drape camouflage paint.

I saved all of my Morgans and Mercury Dimes in it and by the end of the 2nd world war it must have weighed 40 or 50 pounds. In the way of banks, I had a B17, P40, a baby flat top, Statue of Liberty, White House, a monkey, and a 18" battleship. Before the war was over my parents divorced and all the household goods were shipped to California. The courts awarded us kids to my mother, so we came with her. The crate that held the tanks and all the model airplanes I had made along with several other crates of valuable household goods disappeared and were never located. I know to this day that the movers who packed up everything stole the crates, but nothing ever came of it. So who knows, one of you Morgan collectors may have one of my prooflike silver dollars in your collection. You wouldn't happen to have a tank bank, would you? I am still looking for the tank.

Many bags of 20 gold pieces and Morgan Silver Dollars were shipped out of the U.S. from the late 1800's to the 1930's. This exporting of dollars and gold was to pay for products imported to the United States and many bags are still out there. Many have been hoarded in trunks, basements, home safes, or perhaps some even in dynamite boxes, like I purchased in the early 1980's from an old couple in Portland. the sulphur fumes and gases left in the wood toned all the coins from black to almost every color of the rainbow. There were several thousand coins hoarded in the hardwood box and I am still selling them today. Treasure Coins are where you find them. Every year or two a new hoard turns up someplace.

In order to have the thousands of collectors for Morgans that we have in the U.S., there has to thousands of coins available. At the present time a collector of modest funds can still collect a full set of circulated Morgans (except for the 1895) in lower grades. However, it won't be but a couple of generations until that will be impossible. When I was a boy you could even buy the tough dates for under $10.00. Those were the days when you could buy an uncirculated (AU) Large Cent for a dime.

Owning and collecting Morgans is collecting our heritage in real terms. Each one is a real store of value in many ways besides the 3/4 ounces it contains. If each dollar could tell you it's story, you could make a thousand movies or plays of it's personal travels. Each time I look at a well worn Morgan, I wonder what stories it could tell me. Yesterday (Sunday, the 23rd of March 1998) I spent 10 hours grading Morgans, Morgans from Good to MS63. During this time my mind turned to the questions, "Why do people collect this series more than all the others?"

I have told you my story and if you wish to tell me yours, email me your story and I'll put it online with others. I'll call the section, Morgan Story Book and you will be able to read your story as well as others.

Please run a spell check on your story as we will just cut and paste it into the section. I barely have time to edit my own writing, let alone time for other Morgan stories. One of the things I am trying to accomplish with the site is make it an enjoyable site for visitors. People love stories of other people's lives, that's why t.v. is so popular.

Well, it's time to go to work so that's all for now.

In closing I'll add some hyperlinks to a number of categories we have added more new coins or paper money to.

Click here for CC Mint Morgan Dollars - O Mint Morgan Dollars - S Mint Morgan Dollars - P Mint Morgan Dollars - D Mint 1921 Morgan Dollars - Dollar Books - Dansco Dollar Coin Albums - H.E. Harris Dollar Folders - Whitman Silver Dollar Coin Folders - Whitman Dollar Coin Albums - Kointain Clear Coin Holders - Dollar 2x2 Plastic Coin Snaps - Plastic Silver Dollar Coin Holders - Silver Dollar Cardboard Coin Holders - Round Dollar Tubes - Square Dollar Tubes - Grading Standards for Morgans.

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