1795 Flowing Hair Dollar (Three Leaves, Silver Plug)

A dollar that came out too light

The United States struck its first silver dollars on a single day in October 1794, on a hand-powered screw press too weak for a coin that size. Production stopped until the Mint had a stronger press, and the first 1795 dollars, 3,810 of them, were delivered on May 6, 1795. The design was Robert Scot's Flowing Hair Liberty, and it lasted only until October 1795, when the Draped Bust dollar, based on a portrait by Gilbert Stuart, replaced it under the new Mint director Henry DeSaussure.

The law required every dollar to weigh 26.96 grams, and the Mint's silver blanks often did not. Overweight blanks were easy to fix: workers filed metal off, leaving the parallel adjustment marks seen on most early dollars. Underweight blanks were a harder problem. For some of them, the Mint cut a hole in the exact center, inserted a plug of silver to make up the difference, and struck the coin over it.

The numismatist Kenneth Bressett, who studied the practice, found the plugs average about 8 millimeters across and had not been confirmed on dollars of any other date. He pointed to an 1817 account from the Lima mint describing a similar repair. Tests he cited found the plug and the coin were usually the same alloy, though one specimen had a plug of higher fineness and another a plug of lower fineness.

The Englishman who took it home

William Strickland was an English polymath, collector and farmer who spent ten months in the United States studying its landscape and agriculture. He reached Philadelphia, then the nation's capital, a few weeks before the end of 1794, carrying letters of introduction to President Washington. By December 22, the researcher David Tripp found, Strickland had already attended a debate in Congress, three blocks from the Mint at Seventh and Filbert streets. Whether he visited the Mint is not recorded.

Strickland spent most of the first week of July 1795 and another week and a half before his departure in Philadelphia. Between May 6 and his sailing on July 29, the Mint coined 99,030 silver dollars. He went home with this one, brand new, aboard the ship Camilla, along with seeds for his experimental farm in Yorkshire.

The coin passed in 1834 to Charles Winn, Strickland's cousin and son-in-law, and then down through the Winn family, the Barons St. Oswald of Nostell Priory in Yorkshire. There it lay in a cabinet made by Thomas Chippendale, one of about 100 of his pieces in the house. The family's American coins numbered some 84, including 34 federal pieces dated 1794 or 1795, essentially as struck. None were 1795 gold coins or Draped Bust dollars, all of which the Mint delivered after late July 1795, which fits the date of Strickland's departure.

For years the coin's story was told differently. Walter Breen called it a presentation piece given to a Lord St. Oswald on a visit to the Mint around October 1795. Tripp's research replaced that legend with Strickland's journey.

From Nostell Priory to the auction block

Major the Lord St. Oswald consigned the family's coins to auction in London in October 1964, where this dollar was lot 141. It was one of three 1795 Flowing Hair dollars in the sale; another, lot 140, went to the American collector Jacque Ostheimer and was stolen from her home in Honolulu on June 14, 1968, never to be recovered.

This coin reappeared at auction in October 1973, passed privately from Dr. Herbert Ketterman to the collector Jimmy Hayes, was sold again at auction in April 1983, and was bought from a dealer in September 1987 by the D. Brent Pogue Collection. That year it was displayed at the American Numismatic Association convention in Atlanta, an appearance later misremembered in print as a sighting of the Lord St. Oswald 1794 dollar.

The Pogue family kept it for 28 years. In September 2015 it was offered in the second Pogue sale in New York, immediately after the Bullowa coin, the finest known 1795 dollar, and realized $705,000, the auction record for the variety. One writer argued at the time that it deserved a grade of 66.

It went on to the collector Bob R. Simpson. On September 17, 2020, it was offered in the first auction of his collection, billed as the finest known 1795 dollar with a silver plug, and realized $630,000, ranking among the 25 most expensive U.S. coins sold that year.

How to recognize it

The Flowing Hair dollar shows Liberty facing right with loose hair and fifteen stars; the reverse has a small eagle in a wreath. Three Leaves refers to the three leaves under each of the eagle's wings, separating this type from the more common Two Leaves pieces. The edge is lettered HUNDRED CENTS ONE DOLLAR OR UNIT. The coin weighs 26.96 grams, measures 39 to 40 millimeters and is 90 percent silver, 10 percent copper.

On this coin the plug is barely visible on the obverse, astride two locks of hair behind Liberty's ear, but on the reverse the blow of the press spread it into a broad circle where the eagle's body meets its right wing. The plug is toned a deeper blue-violet than the surrounding silver, likely from a difference in alloy. The coin also carries adjustment marks across Liberty's hair, forehead and chin, a reminder that the same blank was filed and plugged.

It was struck from an early state of the dies, with two tiny flaws at the end of the left ribbon still present. The surfaces are partly prooflike, with deep gold toning around the obverse design and blue and violet in the reverse fields. PCGS has graded it MS65+, the only silver-plug dollar at that level and the second-highest grade it has given any 1795 dollar.

Early catalogers saw the plugs without understanding them. In 1907 one described a plugged BB-18 dollar as having a faint nick on the ear, and in 1956 Breen called the feature a curious oval planchet defect. A heavily double-struck plugged example sat unrecognized for years in the Smithsonian's National Numismatic Collection.

A repair that became a prize

Silver plugs were a workaround from the Mint's first year of striking precious metal, and today they are collected as evidence of how the young institution coped. PCGS estimates about 250 silver-plug 1795 dollars survive in all grades, about six in Mint State and two at the gem level.

The Lord St. Oswald coin is the finest of them, and its untouched century and a half in a Yorkshire cabinet is why. The two finest 1795 Flowing Hair dollars known, this coin and the Bullowa piece, are both B-7, BB-18 three-leaf dollars, and both passed through the Pogue collection.

The numbers

Mintage, 1795 dollars

About 160,295 in all; the Flowing Hair share is uncertain

Coined while Strickland was in America

99,030 dollars between May 6 and July 29, 1795

Silver-plug survivors

About 250 in all grades, about 6 Mint State, 2 at 65 or better (PCGS estimate)

Weight

26.96 grams

Diameter

39-40 mm

Composition

90% silver, 10% copper

Plug size

About 8 mm on average

Edge

Lettered: HUNDRED CENTS ONE DOLLAR OR UNIT

Designer

Robert Scot

This coin's grade

PCGS MS65+, CAC; PCGS population 1, none finer with a silver plug

Timeline

1. Oct 15, 1794

   The first U.S. silver dollars are struck in Philadelphia.

2. Dec 22, 1794

   By this date William Strickland, newly arrived in Philadelphia, has attended a debate in Congress.

3. May 6, 1795

   The Mint delivers its first 3,810 dollars of 1795 on a new, stronger press.

4. Jul 29, 1795

   Strickland sails for England with this coin; 99,030 dollars had been coined since May 6.

5. Oct 1795

   The Draped Bust dollar replaces the Flowing Hair design.

6. 1834

   The coin passes to Charles Winn, Strickland's cousin and son-in-law, at Nostell Priory.

7. Oct 1964

   The Lord St. Oswald collection sells at auction in London; this coin is lot 141.

8. Jun 14, 1968

   A different Lord St. Oswald 1795 dollar, lot 140, is stolen in Honolulu and never recovered.

9. Oct 1973

   The coin sells at auction in New York.

10. Apr 1983

    Sold at auction from the Jimmy Hayes Collection.

11. Sep 1987

    Acquired privately for the D. Brent Pogue Collection; shown at the ANA convention in Atlanta.

12. Sep 2015

    Realizes $705,000 in the second Pogue sale in New York.

13. Sep 17, 2020

    Realizes $630,000 in the first sale of the Bob R. Simpson Collection.

The world in 1795

• Jan 19, 1795

  The Batavian Republic is proclaimed in Amsterdam, ending the Dutch Republic.

• Feb 7, 1795

  Congress passes the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

• Apr 7, 1795

  France adopts the metric system.

• Jun 24, 1795

  The U.S. Senate ratifies the Jay Treaty with Great Britain.

• Aug 3, 1795

  The Treaty of Greenville ends the Northwest Indian War.

• Oct 24, 1795

  The Third Partition of Poland is finalized.

• Oct 27, 1795

  The United States and Spain sign Pinckney's Treaty.

• Nov 2, 1795

  The French Directory takes power.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1795 Flowing Hair Dollar (Three Leaves, Silver Plug) is number 38 of 100 in the coins entries of the FLOAT 100. 96 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (78 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The silver plug was a weight fix: when a blank came out too light, the Mint cut out its center and inserted extra silver.
• Silver plugs have not been confirmed on U.S. dollars of any other date than 1795.
• The Lord St. Oswald coins spent most of their years in a Thomas Chippendale coin cabinet at Nostell Priory in Yorkshire.
• A sister coin from the same 1964 sale was stolen in Honolulu in 1968 and has never been found.
• For decades the coin was said to be a gift to a visiting lord; it was actually brought home by a traveling English farmer.
• Catalogers in 1907 and 1956 described plugs as a nick and an oval defect before anyone understood what they were.