Flowing Hair Dollars (1794–1795)

The Screw Press Was Too Small, the Planchet Was Undersized, and the First 1,758 Dollars Were All That Could Be Saved

The Coinage Act of 1792 authorized a national mint and defined the dollar as the monetary standard of the new republic. Engraver Robert Scot, commissioned on November 23, 1793, on Thomas Jefferson's recommendation after Joseph Wright died in that year's yellow fever epidemic, prepared the dies for the first silver dollar in the following year. His obverse placed a right-facing bust of Liberty with loose, flowing hair, LIBERTY above, the date below, eight stars to the left and seven to the right. The reverse depicted a small, primitive eagle perched on a cloud within an open wreath, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA surrounding. The denomination was placed not on the face of the coin but on its edge, lettered HUNDRED CENTS ONE DOLLAR OR UNIT in a formula that declared the coin's value in the clearest possible terms. The Flowing Hair half dollars of 1794 and 1795 also carried their denomination only on the edge, as FIFTY CENTS OR HALF A DOLLAR, and no Draped Bust dollar ever carried its denomination on the face.¹

Production in October 1794 immediately exposed a problem: the Mint's screw press had been built for coins no larger than a half dollar, and the dollar planchet, at 39 to 40 millimeters and 26.96 grams, exceeded its capacity. Most of the roughly 2,000 coins struck, by Walter Breen's estimate, were weakly defined in the centers, particularly on the lower-left obverse and the corresponding reverse area. Mint Director David Rittenhouse, who had personally provided the silver for the first coinage, approved delivery of 1,758 coins on October 15, 1794. The remainder were held back and subsequently used as planchets for 1795-dated coins. Production then halted entirely until a more capable press could be built. The first delivery under the new press, totaling 3,810 pieces, followed on May 6, 1795. All subsequent Flowing Hair dollars, and all coins of this design through the Draped Bust type's adoption in October 1795, were struck on that superior equipment.²

The 1794 Dollar Is the First Silver Dollar Struck by the United States Mint, and Perhaps 135 to 150 Survive

The 1794 Flowing Hair dollar was struck from a single die pair. That fact, combined with the 1,758-piece deliverable quantity and the subsequent two centuries of attrition, means that perhaps 135 to 150 examples survive. Most are heavily circulated; the coin entered commerce in a young republic that used its coinage hard. The 1794 dollar is the foundational silver coin of the republic, the first physical form of the monetary unit defined by the Coinage Act of 1792, and it is rare enough that most collectors will never own one. The vast majority of examples that come to auction appear in grades between About Good and Very Fine. Mint State examples are extraordinarily scarce. The finest known, graded PCGS Specimen 66, is the best-preserved survivor of the original striking. It sold at Stack's Bowers Galleries in January 2013 for $10,016,875, then the highest price realized at auction for any coin.³

The 1794 dollar has no die varieties accessible to the collector. There was one obverse die and one reverse die, producing one combination. What variation does exist among survivors reflects differences in die state, strike quality, and the amount of wear accumulated over more than two centuries. One 1794 dollar, the Specimen 66 finest known, has a small silver plug set into the center of the coin, approximately 8 millimeters in diameter, inserted at the Mint to correct an underweight planchet, and a number of 1795 dollars show the same repair. The plug was driven into a drilled hole in the blank before striking; the subsequent impression from the dies obscures the plug on well-struck coins but leaves it detectable on many of the repaired pieces. The plugged coins are among the more tangible physical records of the early Mint's improvised production methods.⁴

The 1795 Has Varieties, but the Coin Most Collectors Pursue Is Accessible at a Price

The 1795 Flowing Hair dollar was produced in far larger quantities than the 1794, with approximately 160,295 reported for the type before the Draped Bust design replaced it in October 1795. The precise split between Flowing Hair and Draped Bust production within the 1795 calendar year is not fully established from Mint records; some portion of the reported total may represent Draped Bust strikings. Multiple die pairs were used, giving rise to a series of documented varieties. The standard classification is that of Bowers and Borckardt, who assigned sequential BB numbers to all early dollar varieties; the 1795 Flowing Hair dollars run from BB-11 through BB-29. The older Bolender classification (B numbers) is still referenced by veteran specialists. The principal collecting distinction among 1795 varieties turns on the reverse leaf count below the eagle's wings: Two Leaves coins as a group are scarcer than Three Leaves coins, though the Two Leaves BB-21 (Bolender B-1) is the second most available die pair of the year, and the Three Leaves BB-27 (Bolender B-5) is the most frequently encountered.⁵

For the collector who approaches the Flowing Hair dollar as a type rather than a variety series, the 1795 is the practical acquisition. Examples in Fine through Very Fine appear at major auctions with regularity, and they are the realistic way for most collectors to own a dollar from the first two years of federal dollar coinage. Mint State survivors exist and appear from time to time; a Two Leaves BB-21 from the Madison Collection realized $431,250 at Heritage Auctions in January 2008. Gem (Mint State 65 or finer) 1795 Flowing Hair dollars are genuine rarities.⁶

Building the Set

A type set requires one coin: a 1795 in any grade. The most accessible approach for the collector new to early dollars is a Fine to Very Fine example of the Three Leaves BB-27 (Bolender B-5), the most plentiful variety of the year, which costs far less than higher-grade pieces. Collectors who wish to extend further have two paths: pursuing the 1795 in higher grades, where condition rarity becomes the governing challenge, or pursuing specific die varieties under the Bowers-Borckardt system, where the scarcest pairings are known from only a handful of examples. The 1794 is a separate collecting target altogether: it appears at major auction rarely, and even worn examples cost many times the price of a 1795. 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), and Bolender, M. H., The United States Early Silver Dollars from 1794 to 1803, 4th ed. (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1982).⁷