The Wind River Collection

关于此套币: The coins of New Orleans represent a city that is rich in history and critical to the westward expansion of the United States. Located near the mouth of the Mississippi River this city was vital to the commerce of the United States especially before the Civil War and the advent of the transcontinental railroad.
Collecting coins from the New Orleans mint did not even occur to me while growing up in the 1960s because they seemed so common. Millions of silver dollars were being released by the government and many had been minted in New Orleans. Some dates, such as the 1903-O went from very rare to common in a relatively short time. Worn Barber coins still occasionally found in circulation often had that boring "O" mintmark.
However, more than twenty years ago while trying to complete a US type set, I reached a budgetary impasse where I only needed the most costly issues so I decided to add the Branch mints to my type set. Little did I know that this would completely change my collecting interests. I realized that many of the New Orleans issues were quite rare even though they were not very expensive at the time. Most issues before the Civil War had been placed into circulation and stayed there. Even AU coins for many dates were hard to find, but not always particularly expensive. Finding the coins became the challenge instead of finding the money to buy them. Once I started collecting New Orleans coins, I realized that they were little studied and could provide many possibilities for investigation, especially the early issues, because they often show the effects of tough environmental conditions and limited resources at the Mint.