1891-O

The 1891-O, at 7,954,529 pieces, ran a smaller New Orleans Morgan Dollar output than the 1890-O 10.7-million figure and reflects the standard early-1890s O-mint allocation under the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. The 1891-O carries the standard Reverse of 1879 hub configuration with no major sub-varieties anchoring the year's specialist collecting. The mintage figure sits at the low end of the typical late-1880s and early-1890s O-mint range, and the date anchors the modest commercial-volume contribution New Orleans made to the broader Sherman Act production schedule.

Strike quality on the 1891-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. The 1891-O is one of the cleaner-struck O-mint Morgans of the early 1890s, but still falls well behind the matched P-mint and S-mint output of the same year. Most surviving examples grade MS62 to MS63 from broken Treasury bag releases, with PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, and NGC populations clustering at MS62 and MS63. MS64 is available and MS65 is condition-scarce.

The 1891-O is a regular common date and a standard New Orleans Morgan acquisition at the mid-grade level. Pricing has held flat for two decades at small premiums above the 1890-O. The 1891-O pairs with the 1890-O and 1892-O as the early-1890s O-mint trio, all three issues widely available from post-1962 Treasury bag-release certified inventory at modest premiums. New Orleans Morgan pricing structure was permanently reshaped by the 1962 Treasury vault release of original O-mint bag inventory, with the post-1962 supply baseline anchoring modern PCGS and NGC certified-pop distributions. Registry-set collectors target the top-pop grade tier where strike quality and surface preservation become the limiting factors on assigned grades. For the New Orleans Mint operating context and the broader O-mint strike-quality pattern across the early 1890s, see the Morgan Dollar series history.