1804 Draped Bust Dollar, Class III

A date that never existed

The United States stopped making silver dollars in March 1804, and the pieces struck that year carried the date 1803. On May 1, 1806, Secretary of State James Madison formally suspended dollar coinage, citing 'considerable purchases' of dollars 'for the purpose of exporting them,' and ordered that the Mint coin silver only in small denominations.

Three decades later the State Department needed sets of American coins as diplomatic gifts. Envoy Edmund Roberts was to carry them to the rulers of Siam, Muscat, Japan and Cochin China. The dollar and the $10 eagle were no longer being made, so Mint officials looked up the last year each had been issued and struck new pieces with that date. For the eagle, 1804 was right. For the dollar it was wrong: every dollar coined in 1804 had been struck from 1803-dated dies. Those diplomatic strikings, made around 1834 and 1835, are the Class I 'originals.' Eight are known.

Roberts delivered sets to the Sultan of Muscat and the King of Siam, then died of dysentery at Macao in June 1836 before reaching Japan or Cochin China. Collectors learned the coin existed in 1842, when Mint officials Jacob R. Eckfeldt and William E. DuBois illustrated an 1804 dollar in their Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations. In 1843 Massachusetts collector Matthew Stickney traded Pine Tree coins and a gold Immune Columbia piece to the Mint Cabinet for one. The legend had started, and the supply was gone.

The 'Midnight Mint'

Collecting boomed in the late 1850s, driven partly by the new small cent and the scarce 1856 Flying Eagle cent. Under Mint Director James Ross Snowden, who served from June 1853 to May 1861, the Philadelphia Mint struck rare dates from old and backdated dies for collectors and dealers. On January 22, 1859, Snowden wrote to Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb that the Mint was 'duly pressed upon, by Collectors of Coins from all parts of the Country,' and that some pieces it issued 'got into the hands of dealers and are sold at excessive prices.'

About a dozen new 1804 dollars were struck in this period, using the original 1804 obverse die but a different reverse die, now called Reverse Y. These coins had plain edges, which made collectors suspicious when they appeared for sale in the summer of 1860. According to Mint curator William DuBois, four were sold before the scandal forced Snowden to recover them. All but one recovered coin were melted. That survivor, the only Class II 1804 dollar, is in the Smithsonian. It was struck over an 1857 Swiss coin: one detailed account calls it a Bern 5-franc piece, while others call it a Swiss shooting thaler.

Who actually struck the coins is still argued. For more than a century the blame fell on Theodore Eckfeldt, son of a Mint foreman, and some references still name him as the likely culprit. Researchers Craig Sholley and John Dannreuther argue instead that the work was done by Archibald Loudon Snowden, the director's nephew and the Mint's registrar of deposits, and Henry R. Linderman, its chief clerk, with dealer William Idler and his son-in-law, Philadelphia dealer Captain John W. Haseltine, handling sales.

Seven of the plain-edge dollars stayed hidden, unsellable without the lettered edge a genuine Bust dollar should have. In March 1873 Linderman became Director of the Mint, and Snowden by then was Chief Coiner. Snowden found an old Bust dollar edge-lettering device in the Mint vault, and around 1875 the seven coins were run through it. The operator was inexperienced: the lettering is blundered on the coins that have been examined, and the pass through the device raised a slight wire rim that had to be filed down. Those seven are the Class III dollars.

How to tell a Class III

Every authentic 1804 dollar was struck from the same obverse die. The reverse tells the classes apart. On Reverse X, used for the Class I originals, the S in STATES sits slightly left of the gap between the two leftmost clouds, and the top-left berry touches its leaf. On Reverse Y, used for Classes II and III, the S sits entirely above the leftmost cloud and the top-left berry is centered between the leaves. One detailed account also distinguishes the dies by where the E in STATES falls over the clouds.

The Class III edge reads HUNDRED CENTS ONE DOLLAR OR UNIT, applied after striking, a process that left the surfaces slightly concave. Four of the seven Class III coins were deliberately worn to look like circulation finds, so they could be offered as newly found circulation pieces rather than as unauthorized Mint products. Three are unworn: the Stack coin, possibly first owned by A. Loudon Snowden, and the coins owned by Linderman and Idler, men who knew where the coins really came from.

The Adams-Carter coin is one of the worn group, though only very lightly: its 2026 catalog describes no loss of detail, satiny luster under gunmetal-gray toning with lavender, gold and green, and glimpses of mirrored field. All Class III coins show some doubling on the reverse from a double strike, and it is most prominent on this one, on STATES OF AMERICA, the stars at right, the eagle's wing and the olive branch. In a die-state study of the surviving Reverse Y coins, Sholley and Dannreuther placed it fifth of seven in the order they were struck.

The Adams-Carter coin: 150 years of owners

The coin's known history begins in 1876, when Captain John W. Haseltine showed it and said it came from a private English source. It went to Phineas Adams of Manchester, New Hampshire, then through Boston dealer Henry Ahlborn to John Pickering Lyman, a Boston bank president. When Lyman's collection was sold on November 7, 1913, the coin brought $340 and went to Baltimore banker Waldo C. Newcomer, who displayed it at the American Numismatic Society in 1914.

In 1932 Newcomer consigned it to the Texas dealer B. Max Mehl, who sold it to Col. Edward H.R. Green, son of Hetty Green, the 'Witch of Wall Street.' Green also owned all five 1913 Liberty Head nickels and at one time the whole sheet of the Inverted Jenny airmail stamp. After Green died in 1936 the coin was sold in 1943 to A.J. Allen of Plainfield, New Jersey, and then in 1946 to F.C.C. Boyd. Percy A. Smith, a Portland, Oregon, desk manufacturer, showed it to the Oregon Numismatic Society in September 1946 and sold it back to Mehl late in 1949.

Mehl offered it in his Golden Jubilee Sale in May 1950, calling the 1804 dollar 'the most famous of all American coins and probably the most famous coin in the world.' Fort Worth newspaper publisher Amon G. Carter Sr. paid $3,250. It stayed with the Carter family until after Amon G. Carter Jr. died in 1982, then sold at auction in January 1984 for $198,000 to an agent for Texas collector L.R. French Jr. French's collection sold in January 1989, where the coin brought $242,000.

From there it moved quickly through dealers and collectors. It was placed with Ohio businessman Phillip Flannagan in 1998, who sold his early coins to raise money for a Christian school and youth camp; it brought $874,000 at his November 2001 sale and $1,207,500 at auction in Baltimore in August 2003. Census records list private sales at $2,250,000 and, in March 2006, $2,475,000. In April 2009 it sold at auction for $2,300,000 to dealer John Albanese, and it later went privately to the Presidio Collection. On January 14, 2026, it was the top lot of a major January coin auction at $3,538,000.

The King of American Coins

The 1804 dollar's royal nickname is old. The pioneering dealers S.H. and Henry Chapman called it the 'King of United States Coins' at least as early as 1885, and the same year George C. Evans called it 'The King among Rarities' in his History of the United States Mint. It has ranked first in the book 100 Greatest U.S. Coins in four of its six editions.

A Class III graded PR55 sold for $1,880,000 in August 2014. Then, in 2025, a Class III no one had published emerged from the collection of New York banker James A. Stack Sr., who bought it before his death in 1951. Graded PCGS PR65 with CAC approval, it is the finest known Class III, and it sold for $6,000,000 on December 9, 2025. Its emergence raised the Class III count to seven, where for generations collectors had believed only six survived.

That discovery also settled a technical question. Examining the Stack coin before it was certified, Sholley and Dannreuther found it was struck before the Class II coin in the Smithsonian, confirming that every Reverse Y dollar started life with a plain edge.

The numbers

Mintage

No record; 7 Class III coins are known (about a dozen Reverse Y coins were struck, most later melted or converted)

Known survivors

16 1804 dollars in all: 8 Class I, 1 Class II, 7 Class III; 6 in museums, 10 in private hands

Weight

About 27 grams (27.00 g and 26.96 g in two sources)

Diameter

40 mm

Composition

Silver and copper: listed as 90/10 by one source and 89.24/10.76 by another

Edge

Lettered HUNDRED CENTS ONE DOLLAR OR UNIT, added about 1875

Designer

Robert Scot (Draped Bust design)

Timeline

1. Mar 1804

   U.S. silver dollar production stops; the coins struck in 1804 carry the date 1803.

2. May 1, 1806

   Secretary of State James Madison formally suspends silver dollar coinage.

3. 1834

   The Mint strikes the first 1804-dated dollars, the Class I originals, for diplomatic presentation sets.

4. 1842

   Eckfeldt and DuBois illustrate an 1804 dollar in their Mint manual, revealing the coin to collectors.

5. May 9, 1843

   Matthew Stickney trades for an 1804 dollar from the Mint Cabinet.

6. Jan 22, 1859

   Mint Director James Ross Snowden writes to the Treasury Secretary about the Mint supplying rare coins to collectors.

7. 1860

   Plain-edge 1804 dollars (Class II) appear for sale in the summer; four are recovered and all but one melted.

8. Mar 1873

   Henry R. Linderman becomes Director of the Mint; A. Loudon Snowden is Chief Coiner.

9. 1875

   About this year, edge lettering is added to the seven hidden plain-edge 1804 dollars, creating the Class III coins.

10. 1876

    Captain John W. Haseltine shows the Adams-Carter coin, claiming an English source; it goes to Phineas Adams.

11. Nov 7, 1913

    The John P. Lyman collection is sold; the coin brings $340 and goes to Waldo C. Newcomer.

12. 1932

    Newcomer consigns the coin; it is sold to Col. E.H.R. Green.

13. May 1950

    Amon G. Carter Sr. buys the coin for $3,250.

14. Jan 1984

    The Carter coin sells at auction for $198,000.

15. Jan 1989

    The L.R. French Jr. collection is sold; the coin brings $242,000.

16. Nov 2001

    Sold from the Phillip Flannagan collection for $874,000.

17. Aug 2003

    Sells at auction in Baltimore for $1,207,500.

18. Apr 2009

    Sells at auction for $2,300,000.

19. Dec 9, 2025

    The newly revealed James A. Stack Sr. Class III, PCGS PR65, sells for $6,000,000.

20. Jan 14, 2026

    The Adams-Carter coin, PCGS PR58, sells from the Presidio Collection for $3,538,000.

The world in 1859

• Feb 14, 1859

  Oregon is admitted as the 33rd state.

• Jun 8, 1859

  The Comstock Lode is discovered in present-day Nevada.

• Aug 27, 1859

  Edwin Drake drills the first oil well in the United States, near Titusville, Pennsylvania.

• Oct 16, 1859

  John Brown's raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory begins.

• Dec 2, 1859

  John Brown is hanged at Charles Town.

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, 1804 Draped Bust Dollar, Class III is number 11 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 (10 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• No U.S. silver dollar dated 1804 was struck in 1804. The coins made that year were dated 1803.
• The Class III coins were made around 1858 to 1860 but could not be sold for about 15 years, until someone found an old edge-lettering device in the Mint vault.
• Four of the seven Class III dollars were deliberately worn so they could pass as old coins found in circulation.
• Col. E.H.R. Green, who owned the Adams-Carter coin in the 1930s, also owned all five 1913 Liberty Head nickels.
• Another Class III, the Berg coin, was once traded for eight acres of land in El Paso, Texas.
• A Class III stolen from the DuPont family in 1967 was recovered in the early 1980s and is now in the Smithsonian.
• Until 2025, collectors believed only six Class III dollars survived. A seventh, the finest of all, had been sitting unpublished in a New York banker's estate since 1951.