Lord Baltimore’s Morgan Dollar Set
Filed Under: ANA Money Show, Tips for New Collectors, Dealer News, Featured, US Coins
by Greg Reynolds for CoinLink
On Wed., July 30, a set of Morgan Silver Dollars traded at the ANA Convention in Baltimore for $2.035 million. Morgans were minted from 1878 to 1904, and again in 1921. While the focus here is on the nature of this set, options for acquiring Morgan Dollars that are dramatically less expensive will also be discussed.
Most Morgan Dollars are not expensive and a low-grade set can be assembled for less than $20,000. Indeed, there are many Morgan Dollars that are not rare in most grade ranges, but are extremely rare in MS-65 and higher grades; these are ‘condition rarities.’ A Morgan Dollar set becomes extremely expensive when the buyer seeks these condition rarities.
All of the coins in this set are graded as MS-65 by either the Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) or the Numismatic Guaranty Corp. (NGC), except ten or so dates that are graded MS-66. Usually, a ‘date’ refers to the combination of the year on the coin and the location of the Mint that manufactured the coin.
This set had an 1880-O (New Orleans Mint) Morgan that is PCGS graded MS-65. While the PCGS has graded more than 7500 1880-O Morgans in total, including more than one thousand in MS-64 grade, only twenty-three have been graded MS-65 and zero have been graded higher than MS-65. This total of twenty-three may represent fewer than sixteen different coins, as some may have been re-submitted in hopes of receiving a MS-66 grade.
While finding an 1880-O is easy, finding one that is PCGS certified MS-65 may be very difficult. An 1880-O may sell for around $25 in EF-40 grade. Over the last two years, several PCGS graded MS-64 1880-O Morgans have been auctioned, and most realize a price in the range of $1495 to $2300. A PCGS graded MS-65 1880-O could bring anywhere from $18,000 to $40,000 at auction in the middle of 2008, though none have been auctioned since Jan. 2007.
Most (or all?) of the coins in this set were acquired privately rather than at auction. This set was assembled by an anonymous collector known as “Lord Baltimore.” He was guided by Bob Green, who is the president of Park Avenue Numismatics.
The first coin in the set was acquired in 2001. The last coin was obtained at the Winter FUN Convention in Orlando in January 2008. (more…)

Back in the Old Days of coin collecting (say 1998…) we dealers continually preached the mantra of the Five Year Hold. What the Five Year Hold said was that in order for your coin purchases to have a chance to mature financially (a euphemism, of course, for making a little dough…) you needed to hold your coins at least five years. But in the Age of the Internet, this maxim seems to have gone the way of the numismatic fixed price list.
Trying to explain what sight-seen and sight-unseen bidding are is at once easy and confusing.
As a leader in the area of rare United States gold, I get to handle some pretty interesting coins on a regular basis. But every now and then there is a piece that comes into my inventory that is so truly exceptional that it gives me pause and makes consider keeping it instead of selling it. The most recent of these was an 1841-D quarter eagle graded MS63 by PCGS that is not only the finest known example of the date but one of the most aesthetically attractive Dahlonega gold coins of any date or denomination that I have seen.















