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1804 Silver Dollar

In 1991, one of the most stunning items was given to the ANA Money Museum--one of the most famous and valuable coins in the world! This is, of course, the Bebee Specimen of the 1804 dated United States Bust dollar, originally purchased from the Philadelphia mint by mid-19th century coin dealer William Idler.

Donated by the ANA Museum's magnificent benefactors Aubrey and Adeline Bebee, of Omaha, Nebraska, this provocative and mysterious coin has had a colorful history on its way to becoming the property of the entire ANA membership. An example of the so-called "restrike," or Class III group of 1804 dollars, probably struck c. 1858, its existence was first disclosed in 1908, when Idler's son-in-law, John W. Hazeltine, disposed of the Idler collection. Idler had sworn Hazeltine to secrecy about his acquisition of the coin forty years earlier. Perhaps he had been troubled by the cloudy nature of his possession of the coin, his having evidently purchased it somehow from the mint, and he was possibly worried about his production of electrotype copies of the piece. Earlier, Idler had obtained another specimen of the 1804 dollar and sold it to one C. P. Nichols, who had returned it to the mint upon request when the story of the unauthorized release of these pieces came out.

H.O. Granberg, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, purchased the coin from Hazeltine. It next "surfaced" in the sale of the William C. Atwater collection by famed sensationalistic Texas coin dealer B. Max Mehl, on June 11, 1946, when it was purchased by Will W. Neil for $2,875. The coin was sold at auction, again by Mehl, on June 17, 1947, for $3,125 to Edwin Hydeman.

Having handled the sale of a number of the 15 known specimens, Mehl was responsible for much of the notoriety surrounding the 1804 dollars today. His showmanship and speculation about its origins helped make it the best known and most eagerly sought-after of American rarities, and it was presumably he who first dubbed it the "king of American coins." Inevitably, a veil of romance settled upon these coins. They had become the focus of the scandals which rocked the mint in the 19th century on account of the peculations of employees; they were tied into early national diplomatic efforts and economic developments; they were the among the most desirable coins tracked by the nascent coin-collecting fraternity; their appearance and manufacture offered a number of seeming contradictions.

Fourteen years after its last sale by Mehl, an anonymous purchaser acquired the Hydeman coin in Abe Kosoff's auction of March 3-4, 1961, for $29,000. Who owned the coin for the next eleven years is presently unknown, but in 1972 Kosoff again offered the coin for sale, on behalf of the owner, selling it to Wide World Coin Company "for a reported $80,000." Later in 1972 it was said to have been purchased by Bowers and Ruddy Galleries for $150,000; the piece was subsequently sold in 1974 to Mark Blackburn for $200,000. It may have changed hands several times before being acquired in 1979 by Superior Stamp and Coin Company, who immediately sold it to Dr. Jerry Buss for $200,000. The Bebees purchased the coin from the sale of the Buss collection, held by Superior Galleries January 28-30, 1985, where it was lot number 1337, realizing $280,000 (plus 10% commission).

A thorough and fascinating account of the 1804 dollars is The Fantastic 1804 Dollar, by Eric P. Newman and Kenneth E. Bressett (Racine, WI: Whitman Publishing Company, 1962). To this work should be added The Fantastic 1804 Dollar: 25th Anniversary Follow-up, also by Newman and Bressett (Coinage of the Americas Conference at the American Numismatic Society, New York: American Numismatic Society, 1987). The ANA Library call Nos. are GB20.N42 and GB20.N42T. Information from both of these works is quoted above.

Great notoriety has attended the 1804 dollars in the 1980s, with the ANA's recovery of the stolen Linderman/du Pont specimen and the sale of a number of the other examples, in particular the Dexter (which realized $900,000 plus 10% commision) and the King of Siam specimens (included in what is undoubtedly the most famous and valuable of U.S. Mint presentation proof sets). Today, the Bebee specimen is valued at $1,000,000, joining the 1913 Liberty Head 5 cent piece (also donated by the Bebees) as the most valuable coins in the Museum's collection.

Numismatists divide the 1804 dollars into two or three groups--the so-called "originals" and "restrikes," with the latter sometimes being divided into two "classes." In real terms, the coins are neither truly restrikes or originals, since they are essentially ante-dated fantasies representing, long afterward, an issue of coinage that never existed in the first place.

The eight known surviving pieces of the Class I ("originals"), were apparently initially struck, without specific authorization, to fulfill President Andrew Jackson's desire to use presentation sets of United States coinage as gifts for foreign Heads of State toward whom he wished to make diplomatic overtures. These included the Emperors of Japan and Cochin China, as well as the Sultan of Muscat and Oman and the King of Siam, with only the set presented to the latter surviving nearly intact today.

Why the mint officials chose to include newly struck proof examples of the dollars and eagles dated 1804 in the 1834 and 1835 sets intended as foreign gifts of state can now be understood although perhaps not adequately explained, but the existence of all the other 1804 dollars is clearly due to laxity and chicanery on the part of the mint workers. The 1804-dated obverse die used in 1834-5 was again employed in 1858, combined with a new reverse, to strike the second group of coins as a part of what became a scandalous embarrassment for the mint. One example of this "issue" was struck on an 1857 Shooting thaler of Bern, Switzerland, with the edge left unlettered. This coin is the so-called "Class II," residing today in our national collection at the Smithsonian Institution. The remaining six "Class III" pieces "emerged" from the mint in the 1860s and 70s, all showing evidence of their edge lettering having been added after the coins were struck, contrary to the practices of the mint back in the time when edge lettering was being legitimately impressed onto the planchets.