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“You’re lucky if an 1804 dollar sells every three to four years at most, and this 1794 dollar, because it’s perhaps the first, makes it very special in itself.” The backs of 1794 dollar coins show a narrow-necked eagle with a furrowed brow. “The fact that this particular 1794 silver dollar is selling, and the fact that any 1804 dollar is selling, makes this a numismatic event,” Mudd says, using the technical term for the study of coins. An 1804 dollar, printed just before the Mint stopped making the coin for over three decades, is also a noteworthy piece. It last sold for just over $10 million in 2013, usurping the longstanding record-holder, the possibly more-famous 1933 Double Eagle. Of particular note is the 1794 one-dollar coin, the most valuable American coin in existence. (On the reverse: a narrow-necked eagle with a furrowed brow.) The antique change makes up the Bruce Morelan Collection, and it’s set to sashay across the auction block in Las Vegas on October 8. The coins up for auction-15 in total, spanning the decade when this type of silver dollar was minted-are Flowing Hair dollars, so named for the regal mane rocked by the busts on the coins’ front side, or obverse. “1794 is the year they say, ‘We’ll start the dollar coin, the linchpin of the system.’ Because our system is built on the dollar, and then multiples of the dollar, and then fractions of the dollar.” Let’s get them out to senators, congressmen, and other VIPs, to show them the Mint is moving forward,’” says Douglas Mudd, the director and curator of the American Numismatic Association’s Money Museum. “The reason for producing these was to say, ‘We can do this.
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Library Company of Philadelphia / Public Domain An early 20th-century postcard depicting the first Mint in Philadelphia, where the first decade of American dollars were struck. What’s certain is that now, over 200 Octobers later, one of those dollars will go up for auction. Still others, including the Smithsonian Institution, say that the coinage was destined for the pockets of the aforementioned dignitaries, as a token of the bright future of the fledgling United States. Others say that despite the historic event, it was all business-no hor d’oeuvres, no party. Some experts say there was a ceremony, well-attended by diplomats and representatives. There’s some debate about what happened next. That day marked a milestone in the making of a country: Two years after Alexander Hamilton established the Mint under President George Washington, the first dollars had been minted. On October 15, 1794, Henry Voigt, the Chief Coiner of the United States, hurried nearly 2,000 silver coins to the desk of David Rittenhouse, the Director of the United States Mint.