AboutMyCoin1895 Proof Morgan Dollar (No Mint Mark)
An 1895 Morgan dollar with no mint mark exists only as a proof — 880 were struck, 90% silver with 0.7734 troy ounces in it — and the 12,000 circulation strikes the Mint’s own report records for that year have never been found, so a worn one is a coin to have authenticated before anything else.
Silver melt value
$49.79
0.7734 troy oz silver × $64.38 per troy ounce
$64.38/ozt, based on spot prices at 23 September 2026 19:59 UTC
Melt value is what the silver is worth, not necessarily what you can sell it for. But it's a good baseline.
Coin info
- Year
- 1895
- Composition
- 90% silver, 10% copper
- Weight
- 26.73 g
- Diameter
- 38.1 mm
- Silver content
- 0.7734 troy oz
- Face value
- $1.00
- Denomination
- Dollar
- Minted at
- Philadelphia (no mark)
- Country
- United States
- Obverse
- Liberty facing left in a Phrygian cap, wearing cotton bolls and wheat
- Reverse
- An eagle with wings spread, holding arrows and an olive branch, within a wreath
- Edge
- Reeded
Is it worth more than melt?
Mintage: 880
This is a proof, not a coin that was ever in a till: it was struck on a polished blank from polished dies and sold to collectors. On this date that is not a detail, it is the whole coin — the 880 proofs are the entire 1895 Philadelphia issue anybody can demonstrate, so there is no ordinary version of it to compare against and no circulated grade it can honestly be in.
The Morgan dollar series
Every Morgan dollar struck between 1878 and 1921 contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver, and date, mint mark and condition decide how far above that metal floor a given coin sits.
- Struck
- 1878–1921
- Designer
- George T. Morgan
- Key dates
- 1893-S, 1889-CC, 1894, 1895, 1892-S
Other years
1903-S Morgan Dollar
A 1903-S Morgan dollar was struck at San Francisco, is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver — and with 1,241,000 struck it is one of the scarcer dates in the series.
1903-O Morgan Dollar
A 1903-O Morgan dollar was struck at New Orleans, is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver — the same metal, and the same value, as a 1903 with no mint mark.
1904 Morgan Dollar (No Mint Mark)
A 1904 Morgan dollar was struck at Philadelphia, is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver — and with 2,788,000 struck it is one of the scarcer dates in the series.
1904 Proof Morgan Dollar (No Mint Mark)
A 1904 proof Morgan dollar is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver, was sold in a 1904 collector set rather than released into circulation, and is one of 650 struck.
1904-S Morgan Dollar
A 1904-S Morgan dollar was struck at San Francisco, is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver — and with 2,304,000 struck it is one of the scarcer dates in the series.
1904-O Morgan Dollar
A 1904-O Morgan dollar was struck at New Orleans, is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver — and with 3,720,000 struck it is one of the scarcer dates in the series.
1921 Morgan Dollar (No Mint Mark)
A 1921 Morgan dollar with no mint mark was struck at Philadelphia, is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver — the same metal, and the same value, as a 1921-D and a 1921-S.
1921-D Morgan Dollar
A 1921-D Morgan dollar was struck at Denver, is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver — the same metal, and the same value, as a 1921 with no mint mark and a 1921-S.
1921-S Morgan Dollar
A 1921-S Morgan dollar was struck at San Francisco, is 90% silver, 10% copper, and contains 0.7734 troy ounces of silver — the same metal, and the same value, as a 1921 with no mint mark and a 1921-D.
The twelve thousand nobody has ever found
The Mint’s report for 1895 records 12,000 silver dollars struck for circulation at Philadelphia, and in the century and a third since, not one has been confirmed. That is why the 880 proofs are treated as the whole date, and why this is the coin collectors call the King of the Morgan Dollars — not because it is the lowest mintage in the series, which it is not, but because the rest of the mintage appears never to have reached anybody.
There are two accounts and they are not settled. The older one is that the 12,000 were melted under the Pittman Act of 1918, which turned some 270 million silver dollars into bars for shipment to India; on that reading the coins existed and were destroyed before anybody thought to keep one. The newer one, from research by Henry T. Hettger, is that they were never dated 1895 at all — a footnote in the Mint’s own records reads "12,000 coined in 1894", which would make the whole mystery a bookkeeping artefact. This page states both because the evidence does, and takes neither.
Why a circulated 1895 with no mint mark is a problem, not a find
Two other mints struck dollars that year and both are ordinary coins: New Orleans made 450,000 and San Francisco 400,000, and they carry an O and an S below the wreath. Removing that letter turns a coin worth a few hundred into one that looks like the rarest date in the series, and it is easy to do — hundreds of 1895-O and 1895-S dollars are known with their mint marks filed away.
So the sequence matters on this date and on almost no other. Do not look up a price first. A genuine 1895 is a proof, which means mirrored fields, frosted devices and no wear at all; anything with a worn cheek or a flattened eagle’s breast is answering a different question. If the coin has any chance of being real, it is worth the cost of certification by a grading service before it is worth a valuation, because at these prices an uncertified example is not a coin, it is a question.
Not an appraisal. AboutMyCoin estimates from published specifications and does not authenticate or grade coins.