1889-CC Morgan Silver Dollar NGC MS63 DPL. Today’s mobile phones have come along way since the days of pay phones and most people would be hard pressed to remember the last time they used a pay phone to make a call. The pay phone was invented in 1889, when William Gray, an inventor from Connecticut became frustrated with having to beg to use a phone to call a doctor when his wife became ill. He installed his first pay phone in a Hartford bank. In Gray’s patented design, coins of different denominations traveled down separate chutes where they struck bells and gongs that the operator could hear to verify the payment. Pay phones of the day accepted quarters, dimes and nickels and although they did not accept dollar coins, putting a dollar worth of change in a pay phone would allow you to call across multiple states.

The dollar coins that were available to the public in 1889 were Morgan dollars. The Comstock Lode, one of the greatest silver strikes in history, was discovered in Nevada in the late 1850s. The strike put downward pressure on silver prices worldwide. In 1878 Congress passed the Bland-Allison Act which required the Treasury Department to purchase large amounts of silver, and to strike it as coins. For reasons of economy, the Treasury chose to strike the silver as dollars.

Morgan dollars were minted from 1878 to 1904 and again for one more year in 1921. Born in Birmingham, England in 1845, George T. Morgan was chosen to design the new dollar coin. Mint Director, Henry P.

Linderman, ordered that a head of Liberty be featured on the obverse of the coin and Morgan recruited Philadelphia school teacher Anna Willess Williams to pose for the new design. The obverse of the coin features a left-facing portrait of Miss Liberty. The reverse depicts a somewhat scrawny eagle which led some to vilify the coin as a "buzzard dollar." The designer's initial M appears on both sides a first. It's on the truncation of Liberty 's neck and on the ribbon's left loop on the reverse.

The featured example is a marvelous one, graded MS-63 DPL by NGC, this coin was originally in a PCGS holder and graded MS-63 DMPL. With flawless mirrored surfaces and splendid frosted devices, this coin looks like it should have been graded MS-64. With a mintage of only 350,000 pieces, this 1889-CC is a true rarity. An extraordinary coin with uninhibited beauty, perfect for any collector!

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