1794

Production of the 1794 silver dollar opened the federal denomination at the Philadelphia Mint and marked the United States' first attempt at a coin in its namesake monetary unit. Mint records document a single delivery of 1,758 pieces on October 15, 1794, after which the press was retired from dollar work; coinage did not resume until May 1795, once a larger machine was installed. Robert Scot, the Chief Engraver, executed the dies, drawing on the Liberty portrait Joseph Wright had developed for the 1793 large cent. The obverse carries eight stars to the left of the bust and seven to the right, with the date below; the small eagle reverse sits within a wreath, and the edge bears the incuse legend HUNDRED CENTS ONE DOLLAR OR UNIT. At 416 grains of .8924 fine silver and roughly 39 millimeters, the planchet exceeded the practical capacity of the screw press in use, a constraint that defines almost every example known today.

Only one die marriage exists, catalogued as BB-1 in the Bowers-Borckardt (BB) attribution system. Because the press could not deliver enough force to fully strike a coin of this diameter in a single blow, nearly every 1794 dollar shows weakness on the lower-left obverse stars and the corresponding upper-right area of the reverse. Authentication therefore turns on more than surface preservation. Genuine pieces display the characteristic die-state markers documented by W. David Bowers and Mark Borckardt, including the precise spacing of the date numerals, the leaf-tip placement, and a faint die crack that develops across the obverse in later strikes. A small number of specimens were struck on planchets that received a silver plug, a measure used at the Mint to bring underweight blanks up to standard weight; the plug appears as a faint disc near the center on both sides under angled light. Examples lacking these die-state and edge-lettering details warrant immediate skepticism.

The 1794 dollar is a Key Date in the deepest sense: it is the inaugural issue of the entire silver dollar denomination and the only date in the Flowing Hair series struck in that calendar year. Survival estimates compiled by Martin Logies in his 2010 census place the extant population at roughly 150 coins across all grades. The Cardinal-Morelan Specimen graded Specimen-66 by PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, realized $10,016,875 at Stack's Bowers in January 2013, the highest public auction result for any 1794 dollar. The Lord St. Oswald Specimen graded PCGS MS66+ (the finest documented Mint State example) brought $6,600,000 at the Heritage Simpson Collection sale in August 2021, and further private transactions in the Bruce Morelan and Legend Numismatics pedigree chain have been reported in numismatic press at higher figures. For broader context on issue, varieties, and grading benchmarks, see the Flowing Hair Dollar series history.