1885 T$1 Trade PR64 认证号39825060, PCGS号7065

Ron Guth

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P. Scott Rubin

The 1885 Trade Dollar is one of the rarest issues in all U.S. coinage. The total mintage is only five Proof examples. All five coins are known today, but the 1885 Trade Dollar was not known to exist until almost twenty-five years after its striking. To some, this gave the impression that these five coins were not made in the year of issue, but were made later for collectors as an additional year-ending design of the Trade Dollar series. Research by Carl Carlson in the papers of Charles Barber, the coins' designer, proved that both the 1884 and 1885 Trade Dollars were in fact produced in the years they were dated.

The first year that an example of the 1885 Trade Dollar appeared at auction was 1913, but it was not until 1954 that the last of these five coins appeared. During that time period, the coin never sold for more than $1,600. By the 1980’s, 1885 Trade Dollars were selling for six figures, and in its last public auction appearance in 2004, the same coin that was the last of the five to appear at auction (The King Farouk specimen) sold for over a million dollars. In 2006, Heritage Galleries sold the Atwater specimen in a private sale for a reported $3,300,000 and the 1885 Trade Dollar will surely bring more the next time one of these five coins becomes publicly available.