It is an interesting exercise to study the Morgan silver dollar market for the years since 1962. Endless paragraphs have been devoted to Morgan dollars in the pages of investment newsletters and numismatic periodicals, not to overlook dealer advertisements. The 1881-S Morgan dollar, the most common variety in higher grades, has bounced around like a ping-pong ball. In the 1980s tens of thousands of 1881-S dollars came on the market, as the result of a hoard discovered in a Chicago bank. Dollars of this particular variety became an investment medium in their own right, and for a time a firm listed bid and ask quotations daily in The Wall Street Journal. At one time there was a special flurry of investor interest, and I recall hearing that $2,000 was paid for a particularly nice MS-65 coin! Then by mid-1993 the price slipped to the $120 range, or even less. In recent years the market price of the 1881-S has been up, down, and sideways.

Scarce and rare issues are less affected by market conditions and vagaries of investment desire. When I sold the Norweb Collection, a particularly nice 1893-S crossed the auction block at a staggering $357,500 - the most ever paid for a Morgan silver dollar before or since! In 1990 I sold at auction in our Sussex Collection sale a very nice 1893-S described as MS-65, but not equal to the Norweb coin, for $154,000.

As I see it, the continued popularity of the Morgan silver dollar is assured. In 1992 dealer John Highfill published The Comprehensive U.S. Silver Dollar Encyclopedia, an anthology of over 1,000 pages, containing dozens of articles and features on the subject. This work lists for $100. A copy is well worth adding to your library.

My study, Silver Dollars and Trade Dollars: A Complete Encyclopedia, was published in September 1993. The two-volume set details the history of silver dollars from 1794 onward and presents much information not hitherto easily available.

Budget Recommendations: You will have to consult current price guides such as "Trends" in Coin World or "Coin Market" in Numismatic News in order to formulate a plan under my guidelines, which are these: Make a list of all the varieties you wish to include. Then use MS-60 to MS-63 for all varieties you can buy for less than $50 each. Then use EF-40 as the objective for all remaining varieties you can buy for less than $50 each. Then use VF-20 in the same manner, then F-12. By this point you will be down to just a few, and you can determine on your own what to do about the 1889-CC, the 1893-S, and the Proof-only 1895.