A Professional Coin Grading Service Mint State 65 1893-S Morgan dollar once held, separately, in the numismatic collections of power collectors J.M. Clapp, Louis E. Eliasberg Sr., and Bob Simpson realized $1,181,250 in an Aug. 9 online auction by GreatCollections.

The price realized included the 12.5% buyer’s premium to the $1,050,000 closing price bid by a Midwest collector.

There were 101 bids placed by 12 unique bidders, according to GreatCollections.

The coin sold unreserved after spirited bidding — more than 50% above its $775,000 PCGS Price Guide value, and a record price for the date in MS-65, according to GreatCollections.

The listing drew intense interest from collectors, dealers and investors, generating more than 14,000 page views and 430 unique bidders tracking the lot, according to the auction house.

Dubbed the King of the Morgan silver dollar series, the 1893-S issue struck at the San Francisco Mint had a recorded mintage of 100,000 circulation coins — the lowest business-strike mintage of the series’ 1878 to 1921 span.

The Panic of 1893 required nearly the entire issue to go straight into commerce, with considerable circulation across a developing West; many survivors were later melted under the Pittman Act of 1918.

Various industry experts estimate that 6,000 to 12,000 survive in all grades, but fewer than 125 are believed to exist in any Mint State grade — and in high Mint State grades the population narrows to a mere handful.

Unbroken pedigree

Beyond its grade, according to GreatCollections, the coin carries an unbroken provenance tracing to the day it left the Mint.

Philadelphia dealer J. Colvin Randall acquired it in 1893 and passed to J.M. Clapp in 1894; it remained with the Clapp family until the entire cabinet was purchased by Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. in 1942 — the collector who formed the only complete collection of United States coins ever assembled.

Sold in the 1997 Eliasberg sale to the Stellar Collection, it later joined the Sunnywood and Simpson collections before being acquired by the Wizard of Oz, a collector from Australia who assembled one of the finest Morgan dollar sets ever formed.

It is the example plated in 100 Greatest U.S. Coins by Jeff Garrett, where it is ranked No. 41.

Record for the grade

The $1,181,250 price underscores how demand for the finest 1893-S dollars has climbed, Great Collections notes.

Only three examples are graded PCGS MS-65 and stickered by Certified by Certified Acceptance Corp. as solid for the grade; the last to appear at auction, in 2020, realized $600,000 — which this Clapp–Eliasberg coin nearly doubled.

Among all 1893-S dollars, it trails only the Vermeule PCGS MS-67 CAC example, which GreatCollections sold in 2021 for $2,086,875, the first Morgan dollar ever to surpass $2 million  dollars and still the auction record for the series.