Draped Bust Dollars (1795–1804)

Gilbert Stuart Supplied the Portrait, and the Result Carried Every Silver Denomination for a Decade

When Henry William DeSaussure became Mint Director in July 1795, one of his declared goals was raising the artistic quality of the coinage. He engaged portraitist Gilbert Stuart to prepare a new design for the silver coins, reportedly using Philadelphia socialite Ann Willing Bingham as the model. Stuart produced a drawing of a more mature Liberty than the Flowing Hair type that preceded her: hair bound with ribbon, a draped gown at the shoulder, a composed rather than windswept face. The sketch was translated to plaster by John Eckstein, and dies were cut by Chief Engraver Robert Scot. The Draped Bust obverse debuted on the dollar in late 1795 and by 1796 had spread to the half dollar, quarter, dime, and half dime, so that for a time every silver denomination in production shared the same portrait. The same obverse persisted, with minor die-to-die variation, through the last Draped Bust dollar struck in 1803 and carried, in name at least, through the 1804-dated presentation pieces struck decades later.¹

The design is more formally composed than the Flowing Hair type and carries more evident ambition in execution, but the coin's difficulty is structural rather than artistic: the dollar planchet demands uniform strike quality that the hand-operated screw press rarely delivered, and adjustment marks from pre-strike filing are a standard feature across the series rather than an occasional blemish. A specialist who has handled many early dollars learns to distinguish what the design looks like when well struck from what it looks like under typical production conditions; the two appearances are substantially different, and condition evaluation for the Draped Bust dollar requires that knowledge in a way that more recent series do not.²

The Small Eagle Type (1795–1798) Is the Scarcer of the Two Types and Has No Easily Available Date

The first reverse used on the Draped Bust dollar carries a refined version of the small eagle from the Flowing Hair type, now perched on a cloud within an open wreath, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA surrounding. This Small Eagle type was struck across four dates: 1795 (approximately 42,000 Draped Bust dollars, sharing the year with the last Flowing Hair strikings), 1796 (79,920), 1797 (7,776), and 1798 (a small production before the Heraldic Eagle reverse was introduced later that year). Among early silver dollar types, the Draped Bust Small Eagle combination is the scarcest; the four dates together produced fewer coins than any single later Heraldic Eagle year, and the 1797 at 7,776 pieces is the lowest-mintage business strike of the entire early dollar series. Nonetheless, collector demand is such that prices across all four Small Eagle dates tend to be similar in comparable grades: scarcity at 1797 levels and accessibility at 1795 levels are both expensive rather than one affordable and one not.³

Mint State examples of the Small Eagle type are genuine rarities in any die variety. The 1795 offers the most opportunities in circulated grades, with Very Good through Very Fine examples appearing with regularity at major auction. The 1797 in any grade requires the patient pursuit that low-mintage early coinage always demands. Star counts on the obverse vary across the Small Eagle years: 15 stars appeared on 1795 and 1796 examples reflecting the 15 states then in the Union; Tennessee's admission in 1796 pushed the count to 16 on some 1797 dies; and by 1798 the Mint had settled on 13 stars referencing the original states, a convention the Heraldic Eagle type maintained through the end of the series.⁴

The Heraldic Eagle Type (1798–1803) Is the Practical Collecting Focus of the Series

In late 1798 the reverse was replaced with a design adapted from the Great Seal: a large heraldic eagle with a shield on its breast, an olive branch in one talon and arrows in the other, a ribbon carrying E PLURIBUS UNUM beneath its neck, and a constellation of 13 stars above. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA arcs above; the edge retained its HUNDRED CENTS ONE DOLLAR OR UNIT lettering throughout. The obverse stars were standardized to 13 (seven left, six right) across most of the Heraldic Eagle years. Dollar production under this type continued through 1803, with coins using 1803-dated dies struck into March 1804 before production ceased entirely. Regular dollar coinage would not resume until 1836 under the Gobrecht Seated Liberty design.⁵

The 1799 is the most common date in the Heraldic Eagle type and the most accessible entry point in the series; it accounts for a substantial portion of total production and appears regularly in grades from Very Good through Extremely Fine. The 1800 is nearly as common. Specialist collectors pursue the many die varieties documented in the Bowers-Borckardt classification, including the 1800 AMERICAI (an extra punch partially obliterated on the reverse), the 1799/8 overdate, and the 1802/1 overdate. Uncirculated examples of any Heraldic Eagle date are conditional rarities; a Gem (Mint State 65 or finer) Draped Bust Heraldic Eagle dollar is a significant prize regardless of date. At Stack's Bowers Galleries in December 2025, a 1800 BB-190 in PCGS Mint State 62 Plus CAC CMQ realized $264,000, confirming strong demand for well-preserved examples even below Gem level.⁶

The 1804 Dollar Was Not Struck in 1804, and There Are Now 16 Known

No silver dollar bearing the date 1804 was struck during the calendar year 1804. Mint records indicate 19,570 dollars were delivered that year, but specialist research has established to general satisfaction that those deliveries used 1803-dated dies. The famous 1804 dollar dates from a different era entirely. In 1834, the State Department commissioned presentation sets of current coinage for diplomatic gifts to the King of Siam and the Sultan of Muscat, to be carried by envoy Edmund Roberts. The Mint prepared sets including gold and silver denominations, and since dollars had not been struck for thirty years, new dies bearing the date 1804 were cut for the purpose, the Mint having assumed (incorrectly) that 1804 was the last year dollars were produced. These coins, struck in 1834 and 1835 from the obverse die and a reverse die designated Reverse X by Newman and Bressett, are the Class I dollars. Eight are known.⁷

Following the abolition of the large cent in 1857, coin collecting in the republic expanded rapidly and the 1804 dollar's rarity became well known. In 1858, Mint insiders struck additional examples using the same obverse die but a new reverse die (Reverse Y). The plain-edge version of these restrikes constitutes the Class II, of which a single example is known, now permanently in the Smithsonian's National Numismatic Collection. A second group of Reverse Y restrikes had edge lettering applied after striking, creating slight concavity in the fields; these are the Class III dollars. For over half a century the count of all three classes combined stood at fifteen, divided as eight Class I, one Class II, and six Class III. In December 2025, a previously unrecorded Class III example from the estate of New York collector James A. Stack, Sr. sold at Stack's Bowers Galleries for $6,000,000, establishing a new record for a Class III and raising the total known to sixteen. The record for any 1804 dollar is $7,680,000, realized at Stack's Bowers Galleries in August 2021 for the Childs-Pogue specimen, a Class I graded PCGS Proof 68.⁸

Building the Set

A type set representing the Draped Bust dollar requires two coins: one Small Eagle and one Heraldic Eagle. The most accessible approach is a Very Fine 1795 or 1799 for the respective types, with selection weighted toward problem-free surfaces and original color. Both types are available in lower circulated grades from major auction houses with predictable frequency; the patience required is in finding attractive examples rather than in waiting for the coins to appear at all. A full date set of the nine business strike dates (1795 through 1803) in circulated grades is achievable with sustained effort and a moderate budget; the same dates in Extremely Fine or above represent a long-term specialist project. The 1804 in any class is a separate pursuit governed by its own resources and timelines. The controlling specialist references are Bowers, Q. David, and Borckardt, Mark, Silver Dollars and Trade Dollars of the United States: A Complete Encyclopedia (Wolfeboro, NH: Bowers and Merena Galleries, 1993); Bolender, M. H., The United States Early Silver Dollars from 1794 to 1803, 4th ed. (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1982); Newman, Eric P., and Bressett, Kenneth E., The Fantastic 1804 Dollar (Philadelphia: Whitman Publishing, 1962); and Bowers, Q. David, The Rare Silver Dollars Dated 1804 and the Exciting Adventures of Edmund Roberts (Wolfeboro, NH: Bowers and Merena Galleries, 1999).⁹