Photos and descriptions used with permission and courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries

The 1802 proof novodel silver dollar is an issue that is usually grouped by numismatists with three others: the 1801 proof novodel, the 1803 proof novodel, and the famous 1804 silver dollars. Like the 1804 dollar, which has been referred to as the “King of American Coins” for more than a century, the 1802 proof novodels were manufactured in a minuscule quantity, some time after 1832. No more than a dozen of the 1802 proof novodels were struck, and only four pieces are definitely confirmed to exist. The specimen offered in the upcoming Heritage CSNS Signature Auction is the Newcomer specimen, and served as the plate coin in Newman and Bressett’s The Fantastic 1804 Dollar.

Much confusion has reigned in the numismatic universe where these problematic coins are concerned, which is unsurprising when one considers the deliberately clandestine nature of the 1801-1803 proofs, as well as the 1804 dollars. Numismatic heavyweights such as Walter Breen, Q. David Bowers, Eric P. Newman, and John Dannreuther (among many others) have attempted to deconstruct the history of these fascinating pieces, and have drawn at least some conclusions that seem logical and supported by the relatively few known facts of the case.

In his monumental 1993 work Silver Dollars and Trade Dollars of the United States: A Complete Encyclopedia, Q. David Bowers outlines the following sequence of events: He believes the novodel dollars were produced from dies that Mint Director Samuel Moore instructed Chief Coiner Adam Eckfeldt to prepare in 1831, in anticipation of a resumption in the coining of silver dollars that never actually occurred. Since the Draped Bust motif had not been used on any U.S. coin since the 1808 half cent, Eckfeldt had to consult old Mint records to ascertain that 1804, 1803, and 1802 were the last years that dollar production featured this design. (What he did not know, however, was that the 1804 delivery contained dollars dated 1803.) By the end of 1831, the Philadelphia Mint had on hand one incomplete obverse die, three obverse dies dated 1802, 1803, and 1804, respectively, and two distinct reverse dies (designated X and Y by Eric P. Newman and Kenneth E. Bressett in their 1962 book The Fantastic 1804 Dollar). Between that year and 1836, the so-called Class I 1804 silver dollars, of which the King of Siam and Imam of Muscat specimens are the most famous examples, were produced. (more…)