SS
Republic Coins Reveal Surprising Secrets of 1861 New Orleans
Half Dollars
Full
Set of Die Marriages to be Displayed for First Time Ever at
NGC's ANA Booth
The recovery of a cache of silver Seated Liberty Half Dollars
from the SS Republic has allowed for an unprecedented study
of 1861 coins struck at the New Orleans mint.
Odyssey Marine Exploration, the leader in deep-ocean shipwreck
exploration and the company that discovered and delicately
recovered the coins, commissioned noted Seated Liberty half
dollar expert, Randall E. Wiley, to carefully review the 1861-O
halves remaining in the Odyssey inventory. Wiley's extensive
examination has allowed, for the first time ever, Numismatic
Guaranty Corporation (NGC) to certify the die marriage and
attribution of each coin to either the Union, State of Louisiana,
or the Confederate States of America (CSA) control of the
New Orleans Mint.
Thousands of coins were individually studied by Wiley and
each was attributed to a specific die "marriage"
or die variety. Among the SS Republic silver half dollars
recovered by Odyssey Marine, Wiley found examples struck from
all 14 die marriages used in production by the United States,
Louisiana, and the Confederacy in 1861. Only the 15th die
marriage, pairing the Federal Seated Liberty obverse with
the Confederate-made CSA reverse design, was not found aboard
the SS Republic. Just four specimens of the famous "CSA
Reverse" half dollar are known to exist, as the coin
was not put into production. The last one sold at auction
brought $632,500.
Of the 15 obverse/reverse die marriages identified by Wiley,
and based on the conclusions he published in the November
2005 Gobrecht Journal, a quarterly publication for collectors
of the Liberty Seated coin series, only two were attributed
to the federal government's control of the mint. His findings
further indicated that the balance of die marriages were used
by the secessionist State of Louisiana and subsequently by
the Confederate States of America.
All of the 1861-O Seated halves recovered from the SS Republic
still in Odyssey's inventory are scheduled to be re-certified
by NGC to identify their die marriage and attribution to either
the Union, the State of Louisiana, or the Confederacy. New
labels will note the coin's specific die marriage and issuing
government in addition to its SS Republic pedigree. A complete
set of all 14 die marriages and 3 die varieties will be displayed
for the first time ever at NGC's booth at the ANA World's
Fair of Money® convention, August 16-19, 2006, in Denver,
Colorado.
Some of the die-marriages/varieties recovered from the SS
Republic were in very limited quantities, so only a small
number of full sets are possible. Odyssey Marine plans to
offer a handful of these sets for sale. Collectors will also
have the opportunity to own a set of 1861-O half dollars attributed
to all three governments. There will also be an offering of
1861-O halves struck from the same obverse die used to mint
the rare and famous Confederate Half Dollar.