I'm new to this, and I tried to look up if this is worth anything at all but that thing is hard to understand. What I have is a 1875 trade dollar. It says 420 grains. 900 fine. S. on it. Is it worth anything? It's okay if there isn't any responses because I don't think there would be any experts on this. Worth a try though. It looks like this. http://www.collectorusa.com/articles/tradedollar.php I know there is a price guide there but I'm having the hardest time figuring that thing out.
I was thinking just the other day wondering how many pennies and coins I've let slip through my hands that could have been worth more than face value.
After looking at my coins, I also found a 1799 Draped bust dollar.Does anyone know the value of these coins? Those price guides are hard to read.
BmwM3: For your trade dollar: "420 grains 900 fine" just describes the silver content (420 grains = 0.96 ounces) and purity (90%) of all trade dollars. It won't be mentioned in the price guide. The "S" is the mint mark. It means your coin was minted in San Francisco. If a coin doesn't have a mint mark (which is a letter by itself that can be just about anywhere on a coin; it's near the date on modern pennies, nickels and dimes, and under "In God We Trust" on state quarters), it means that it was minted in Philadelphia (the original U.S. Mint). Other possibilities are "CC" for Carson City, "O" for New Orleans, "C" for Charlotte, and "D" for Dahlonega (pre-Civil War) or Denver (post-1904) Years and mint marks are the two main identifiers for coins; the price guide you linked to has 4 rows that start with: 1875 1875-CC 1875-S 1875-S/CC In order, the first three lines represent the 1875 coins from Philly, Carson City, and San Francisco. The fourth line is a rarity -- it represents coins that have an S printed over a CC. Your coin probably doesn't have that, but it's good to check. Each column has a letter or number as a header. Those represent the coin's grade. Like school grades, there's a broad letter component and specific number component. MS -- "mint state" -- 60 to 70 AU -- "about uncirculated" -- 50 to 59 EF -- "extremely fine" -- 40 to 49 VF -- "very fine" -- 20 to 39 F -- "fine" -- 12 to 19 VG -- "very good" -- 7 to 11 G -- "good" -- 4 to 6 P -- "poor" -- 1 to 3 Here are some nice general guidelines on how to rate a coin. For anything official, you'll probably want to get a professional numismatist to grade the coins for you. So, once you figure out what grade the coin is, just look in the appropriate column for the 1875S trade dollar (or, if you're lucky, the 1875S/CC). If the grade of your coin isn't there, just estimate its price from the given prices. Repeat this process with the 1799 dollar. Here is a nice set of pages on the draped bust dollar. Short answer: trade dollar: $75 and up draped bust dollar: $750 and up (!)
Holy hell $750 and up. Thanks alot for the info Kimble14. I really appreciate it. I gotta go get this professionally looked at. I just don't want to get ripped off because I know nothing about this. I was just looking at my old coins from 10 years ago and happen to come across this. I can't believe I had this in my closet this whole time. After looking at the website I hope its not a counterfeit.
