Q. David Bowers
Business Strikes:
Enabling legislation: Act of January 18, 1837 Designer of obverse: Robert Ball Hughes (after Gobrecht)
Designer of reverse: Robert Ball Hughes (after Reich)
Weight and composition: 412.5 grains; .900 silver, .100 copper
Melt-down (silver value) in year minted: $1.003 Dies prepared: Obverse: Unknown; Reverse: Unknown
Business strike mintage: 165,100; Delivery figures by day: January 31: 83,000; February 28: 25,500; November 30: 56,600.
Estimated quantity melted: Unknown
Approximate population MS-65 or better: 0 or 1 (URS-O)
Approximate population MS-64: 0 or 1 (URS-O)
Approximate population MS-63: 8 to 12 (URS-4)
Approximate population MS-60 to 62: 20 to 40 (URS-6)
Approximate population VF-20 to AU-58: 3,500 to 5,000+ (URS-13)
Characteristics of striking: Varies; topmost stars and head of Miss Liberty are often lightly struck.
Known hoards of Mint State coins: None
Proofs:
Dies prepared: Obverse: At least 1; Reverse: At least 1. Proof mintage: 15-25 estimated
Approximate population Proof-64 or better: 2 or 3 known (URS-2)
Approximate population Proof-60 to 63: 3 to 6 known (URS-3)
Commentary
Despite a relatively high mintage, 1843 is very rare in higher levels of Mint State.
Additional Information
The Year 1843 in History
Settlement of the American West continued, albeit slowly, in the years before large-scale gold discoveries were made in California. About 1,000 settlers followed the Oregon Trail with missionary Marcus Whitman to settle in the Columbia River Valley. Many decades later, the Oregon Trail would be featured on a series of American commemorative half dollars issued 1926-1939. John Quincy Adams, erstwhile president who was back in Congress in 1843, stated in an address to the House of Representatives, "If slavery must go by blood and war, let war come." Abolition remained the most divisive subject of the era.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse, a man of many talents, including expertise in oil painting, was the beneficiary of a $30,000 appropriation by Congress to facilitate the construction of an experimental telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. At the time, news could travel only as fast as the most speedy train, with the average being about 35 to 40 miles per hour. In Worcester, Massachusetts, Charles Thurber invented a typewriter, one of several such devices to be constructed during this era, with no clear-cut knowledge of whose actually came first. In Boston, Elias Howe devised a sewing machine (not the first of its class, however), and built a huge business in years to come.
The Philadelphia Dollar newspaper, which illustrated its masthead with an undated Liberty Seated silver dollar, published The Gold Bug, a tale of buried treasure by Edgar Allan Poe, the author also of The Pit and the Pendulum, which saw print the same year. Two other epochal stories also appeared:
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with the unforgettable curmudgeon Scrooge, and Prosper Merimee's Carmen, later to be incorporated into Bizet's opera of the same name.
Columbia, Gem of the Ocean, a rousing song with a march cadence, was published and would remain popular for over a century. At the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York City the Virginia Minstrels performed and launched a branch of entertainment that would become wildly popular in ensuing decades. Blackface minstrel shows, for which Stephen Foster wrote some songs, acquired the euphemistic nickname "the Ethiopian business."
At the Charlotte, Dahlonega, and New Orleans mints, $2.50 pieces would be coined with small date numerals, the 4 being of the crosslet variety. At the Charlotte and New Orleans mints the Large Date variety, with plain 4, would be coined. Not a single collector cared about branch mint gold (or, for that matter, silver either) coins, and not even the Mint Cabinet acquired specimens for its exhibit.
1843 MISCELLANY (from The New England Almanack, 1844, containing information compiled in 1843):
Railroads: "September 6, 1843, Tuesday evening, about 7 o'clock, the cars first Came into Concord, N.H. and were welcomed by the discharge of cannon and the cheers of many ladies, gentlemen, and children. In the same year, there were in the United States 4,442 miles of railroads, which are said to have cost, at least, $100,000,000."
Population statistics: Free white persons in the United States: 7,249,266 males, 6,939,842 females. Free colored persons in the U.S.: 186,467 males, 199,778 females. Slaves: 1,246,408 (of whom 422,599 were under 10 years of age) males, 1,240,805 (of whom 421,470 were under 10) females.
Philosophy: "A good fire and a clean hearth make a poor man's house look rich."
Commentary: "No people in the world are more happy than our independent New England farmers. If you take a peep into one of their dwellings, in one of these long evenings, you will probably find the good man engaged in reading some useful book, or instructing his children; and the good woman knitting or sewing, or assisting her daughters in learning their Sabbath school lesson. Peace and plenty smile around the farmer's fire-side, and the family are happy in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labors." [On the other hand, severe corporal punishments, justified by Proverbs 19:18, 23:13-14, and Hebrews 12:4-11, made the children unhappy, while the men's Demon Rum made wives unhappy, and hours-long Sunday hellfire sermons made all unhappy Walter H. Breen.]
Leader of the U.S.: John Tyler, president, salary $25,000. Selected postal rates: Printers. of newspapers may send one paper to each other free of postage. Single letter rate, not over 30 miles distance, 6¢; 30 to 80 miles, 10¢; 80 to 150 miles, 12-1/2¢; 150 to 400, 18-3/4¢; over 400 miles, 25¢.
A question: "There is a machine which has five wheels, whose teeth take hold of, or drive each other. The first has 120 teeth; the second, 30; the third, 22; the fourth, 18; and the fifth, 15 teeth. How many revolutions will each wheel have made, when all begin again at the same tooth at which they first began to revolve? Note: No correct answers to the queries in last year's almanack have yet been received."
Politics: "Wanted for Democratic Rulers: Such men who have said and stick to it that the Whigs are a parcel of aristocratic Hartford Convention tories, and enemies to their country; that there is plenty of hard money in the country, and that all banks are a curse to the nation, and that Jackson did exactly right when he, as it were, tore the United States Bank, and consequently almost all other banks, limb from limb. Also that Van Buren walked exactly in the steps of his 'illustrious predecessor,' as he said he would, although Jackson strided [sic] as far again as Van Buren could to save his life."