1887-O

The 1887-O, at 11,550,000 pieces, ran the largest New Orleans Morgan Dollar output of the 1880s and continued the southern mint's expanded role in absorbing the Bland-Allison Act silver-dollar production. The 1887-O carries the standard Reverse of 1879 hub configuration; the year's specialist collecting interest centers on the 7/6 overdate variety catalogued separately on this site, paralleling the 1887 Philadelphia 7/6 overdate. The large 11.55-million mintage produced broad Treasury bag releases through the 1950s and 1960s, but the date's condition rarity at MS65 and above tracks the typical New Orleans strike issues across the certified pool.

Strike quality on the standard 1887-O follows the established New Orleans pattern. Liberty's hair above the ear is consistently soft, the eagle's breast feathers show characteristic O-mint weakness, and even Mint State examples rarely show the sharp central detail that defines a true gem strike. Most surviving examples grade MS62 to MS64 from broken Treasury bag releases, with PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, and NGC populations clustering at MS62 and MS63. MS65 is condition-scarce because of the strike issues, and MS66 is genuinely rare despite the high mintage, anchoring the 1887-O's collecting profile firmly in the strike-related condition-rarity tier rather than absolute scarcity.

The 1887-O is a regular common date by classification but a meaningful condition rarity above MS64, with pricing trading flat through MS63 and climbing sharply at MS65 and above. The 1887-O pairs with the 1886-O as a high-mintage O-mint condition-rarity pair where the strike issues cap the upper-grade availability across the certified-pop distribution. The 7/6 overdate variety adds significant VAM specialist demand on top of the base date pricing. Modern New Orleans Morgan collecting reflects the post-1962 Treasury vault release of original O-mint bag inventory, which permanently anchored the rarity tier and pricing structure across the series. PCGS and NGC certified-pop distributions skew toward MS63 and MS64 reflecting bag-release survival rather than pre-1950 collector preservation. For the New Orleans Mint operating context and the broader O-mint strike-quality pattern, see the Morgan Dollar series history.