What really is considered Old West coinage.....

[FilthyBroke]

What is the quintessential coinage of the Old West?  I want to know what pays for a beer at the bar or goods at the local General Store.  And did Mexican coins still circulate up to the 1870s and 80s?  I know that U.S. coinage was the only legal tender but it's hard to imagine that all others were immediately removed from circulation. 

Just wanted to see what you all thought on the subject. 

[coinsarefun]

Just a wild guess.................Morgans?

[Conderluva]

Quintessential would probably vary depending on the size, location and activity of the area in question.  I would imagine it could range from U.S. coinage, foreign coinage, local token coinage to probably just about anything they could get their hands on that someone else would accept as payment.  I don't have a great answer but Stef's sounds good.  Maybe lower denomination though.  Don't know if a lot of average people would be spending morgans often.  Could be wrong though, what were wages like?

[FilthyBroke]

I can't imagine that wages were much more than a buck or two a week in many cases. I have always assumed that lower denominations were the norm.  The more I think about it, the location would surely be a key factor, too.  It may well be that the coins were a good mix of different types, or what was available in the area.  There seems to be a lot of possible factors involved.

[walmann]

As much as many consider the Morgan, especially the CC's, the  dollar of the Old/Wild West, silver , while more often used in the West vs the East, silver was resisted and looked down upon versus gold. The average person did not like to accept change given in the form of silver when they used a gold piece for the purchase. The actual bullion value of silver pieces were not on par with the equivalent gold pieces (IE a $1 gold piece had more bullion value than a $1 silver dollar as would two silver halves or four quarters). This fact tends to be forgotten these days in our clad coin era while silver is much more desirable.

The history is both complex and interesting, involving valuation of metals,  cessation of producing bank notes in denominations lower than $5, purity of the coins and Treasury holdings of both gold and silver. In relation to mintage and holdings of silver by the Treasury, silver dollars did not really become well accepted by the public and banks (previously much resistance by the banks) till after 1886 with government issuing silver certificates in the lower denominations of 1, 2 and 5 dollars. By 1889 people generally were no longer distrustful of silver and the paper silver certificates were also being widely used.

So for much of the time period of the Old West (1866-1900) silver dollars were not very popular.

[FilthyBroke]

Interesting, Walmann...I wouldn't have thought that gold coins were that common in circulation, unless it were far west where they were mining it and producing their own fractionals.

[walmann]

Interesting, Walmann...I wouldn't have thought that gold coins were that common in circulation, unless it were far west where they were mining it and producing their own fractional.

You can get a feel for the confidence gold carried, if I recall correctly, by the very brief write up on California gold in the Redbook. I'm at work and don't remember the exact years involved but despite laws, these coins and tokens were produced (from the late 1840's) into the mid 1880's, with use of earlier dates from the 1850's and 1860's being used to skirt laws from the mid 1860s. These coins were struck in denominations of 25 and 50 cents as well as one dollar.

As much as they later become "suspect", they intially enjoyed wide useage and acceptance.

You must also consider this is the time period where paper money was becoming accepted. The Federal government issuing its first notes in 1861 and before the end of the civil war was issuing gold certificates. By the late 1880s paper currency was readily accepted.

[Scottishmoney]

 

So here we go...

[cpm9ball]

Hi, my name is Chris and this is my first post on this site. I first started collecting Morgans in 1957, took a hiatus from the hobby for about 20 years and then rekindled my interest in Morgans about 25 years ago.

Regarding coinage of the Old West, you should keep in mind that the U.S. was charging a fee to the mining companies for turning their bullion into coins. It was usually about 5%. Some of the companies objected to this fee, $50,000 for every million dolllars of buillion processed, and would ship their bullion to England where there was no processing fee. For that reason, silver coinage was in short supply from the 1850's - 1870's. Even after the Carson City Mint began striking the Morgan in 1878, most of these coins never saw the light of day. They were eventually shipped to the U.S. Treasury where they remained for decades until the Treasury releases of the 1930's - 1970's.

It is generally thought that the Morgan dollar was just not popular, but I've always wondered if it wasn't because of poor marketing. Any time a new product is introduced, it invariably takes time to gain public acceptance. Perhaps the CC Mint didn't try hard enough. Who knows? One thing is known for sure, and that is that west of the Mississippi, the Morgan dollar was more popular in the state of Montana than anywhere else. Banks couldn't keep enough on hand. Even today, the populace is so enamored by the Morgan that even heavily circulated specimens are "scooped up" immediately by old timers at public sales and local auctions.

Chris

[Deagle74]

  aboard Chris!!!
And nice info on the topic...thx!
Rok