JULY 31
1840•Seated Liberty Dollar
1795•Capped Bust Right Half Eagle ($5)
The First Seated Liberty Silver Dollars Are Delivered
On July 31, 1840, the Philadelphia Mint delivered the first 12,500 circulation-strike Seated Liberty silver dollars, launching a denomination and design combination that would endure until 1873. The new dollar placed Christian Gobrecht's seated figure of Liberty on the obverse and a heraldic eagle on the reverse, replacing the experimental Gobrecht dollar format of the late 1830s with a design intended for regular production. Only 61,005 dollars were delivered in 1840, and relatively few survive in Mint State today. Remarkably, July 31 already held another foundational place in U.S. Mint history: exactly 45 years earlier, in 1795, the Mint delivered its first federal gold coins—744 Capped Bust Right half eagles. Few dates connect two such important beginnings in American coinage.
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The First Delivery
Mint records give July 31, 1840 a precise place in silver-dollar history.
On that date, 12,500 circulation-strike Seated Liberty dollars were delivered.
It was the first delivery of the new regular-issue dollar type.
Additional deliveries followed later in the year: 41,000 on November 30 and 7,505 on December 31.
Together they produced an 1840 circulation-strike mintage of 61,005 pieces.
The 1840 issue represented more than a new design.
It marked the return of the silver dollar as a regular circulation denomination after decades of extremely limited production.
The early United States Mint had struck substantial numbers of dollars in the 1790s and early 1800s.
But dollar production effectively disappeared after the early republic period.
Experimental Gobrecht dollars in the 1830s reopened the question of what a modern American silver dollar should look like.
Before the 1840 Seated Liberty dollar, Christian Gobrecht's name was already attached to one of America's most celebrated experimental coinages.
Gobrecht dollars dated 1836 and 1839 featured a seated Liberty on the obverse and a dramatic flying eagle on the reverse.
They were produced in small quantities and occupy a complicated space between pattern, experimental, and circulation coinage.
The 1840 dollar transformed the seated Liberty concept into a regular production series.
Liberty Takes Her Seat
The obverse shows Liberty seated on a rock.
She holds a pole topped with a liberty cap in her left hand.
Her right hand supports a shield bearing the word LIBERTY.
Thirteen stars surround the figure, representing the original states.
The date appears below.
The composition became one of the defining images of nineteenth-century American silver coinage.
The Seated Liberty concept grew from artistic work associated with painter Thomas Sully and Mint engraver Christian Gobrecht.
Gobrecht adapted and engraved the design for coinage.
The motif was not confined to the dollar.
Variants of Seated Liberty appeared on the half dime, dime, quarter, half dollar, and eventually the twenty-cent piece.
Few American coin designs have been applied across so many denominations for so many years.
The regular 1840 dollar abandoned the soaring eagle of the Gobrecht dollar.
Instead, the reverse used a more traditional heraldic eagle with a shield on its breast.
The eagle holds an olive branch and arrows.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA surrounds the design, with ONE DOL. below.
This visual language connected the new dollar more closely with other federal coinage.
By 1840, Seated Liberty was not entirely new to Americans.
The motif had already appeared on smaller silver denominations.
Half dimes and dimes adopted versions beginning in 1837.
Quarters followed in 1838.
Half dollars began using the design in 1839.
The silver dollar was therefore the last of the major traditional silver denominations to enter the Seated Liberty family.
The silver dollar occupied an awkward place in the nineteenth-century monetary system.
Its bullion value, legal valuation, international movement, and competition from gold and foreign silver all affected whether it made economic sense to strike.
After the gold-content adjustment of 1834, U.S. gold coins circulated more effectively.
That reduced some demand for large domestic silver coins.
Foreign silver dollars also remained familiar in American commerce.
The Mint did not face overwhelming public demand for a new U.S. silver dollar.
The First 12,500 Were a Demonstration
Numismatic research indicates that the first 12,500 circulation-strike dollars were made on government account.
They effectively introduced bullion depositors to the new coinage option.
Later 1840 production responded more directly to depositor demand.
This helps explain the long gap between the July 31 delivery and the much larger November 30 delivery.
The Mint could produce dollars, but private demand would determine how extensively the denomination was used.
By modern standards, 61,005 coins is an extremely small mintage for a major denomination.
Even in 1840 it was modest compared with lower-denomination silver coinage.
Half dimes, dimes, quarters, and half dollars were more useful in everyday transactions.
A silver dollar represented substantial purchasing power.
Many dollars served banking, reserve, bullion, and international purposes rather than constant retail circulation.
A Seated Liberty dollar contained a substantial quantity of silver.
Carrying many of them was physically cumbersome.
Twenty silver dollars weighed far more than paper banknotes representing the same nominal value.
For large transactions, banks and merchants had practical reasons to prefer paper or gold.
Yet the silver dollar remained symbolically powerful because it embodied the familiar unit on which the monetary system was based.
American commerce had long depended on Spanish and Spanish-American silver coins.
Mexican dollars and related pieces circulated widely.
They were trusted internationally and existed in quantities the young United States Mint could not initially match.
Even after federal silver coinage expanded, foreign money remained part of everyday American monetary life.
The 1840 dollar entered a marketplace where “a silver dollar” did not automatically mean a United States coin.
The first Seated Liberty dollars were struck at Philadelphia and therefore carry no mintmark.
The New Orleans Mint would later produce Seated Liberty dollars beginning in 1846.
Carson City eventually joined the series in 1870.
Those branch-mint issues became some of the most famous and challenging coins in the series.
But in 1840, the new dollar was exclusively a Philadelphia product.
The “No Motto” Era
The 1840 dollar belongs to what collectors call the No Motto type.
Its reverse does not carry IN GOD WE TRUST.
That motto was added to the Seated Liberty dollar in 1866 after the Civil War.
The resulting design change creates two major collecting types: 1840–1865 without the motto and 1866–1873 with it.
The first 12,500 coins delivered July 31 began the earlier type.
Religious sentiment during the Civil War encouraged Treasury officials to add an acknowledgment of God to federal coinage.
Congress ultimately authorized the motto IN GOD WE TRUST.
It appeared on the Seated Liberty dollar above the eagle beginning in 1866.
The change altered a design that had remained broadly recognizable since 1840.
For collectors, the motto provides a convenient dividing line within the series.
The Seated Liberty dollar remained a federal denomination until the Coinage Act of 1873.
That legislation eliminated the standard silver dollar and created the Trade Dollar for international commerce.
The change became part of the larger political battle over silver that later critics called the “Crime of '73.”
Thus the series begun with the July 31, 1840 delivery ended through one of the most consequential monetary laws of the nineteenth century.
The transition illustrates how the purpose of a dollar coin changed.
The Seated Liberty dollar was the traditional domestic silver-dollar denomination.
The Trade Dollar was heavier and designed primarily to compete in Asian commerce.
Only five years later, the Bland-Allison Act would bring back a standard silver dollar in the form of the Morgan dollar.
The 1840 Seated Liberty issue therefore occupies a central position in the long evolution of the American dollar.
The first-year status of the 1840 dollar did not inspire widespread contemporary saving.
Collectors were not yet building date-and-mintmark sets in the modern fashion.
Many dollars entered financial channels, were exported, circulated, or eventually melted.
PCGS notes that Mint State examples are very rare.
The lack of a known large hoard means collectors cannot rely on a later cache to supply pristine examples.
First-Year Coins Are Not Always Saved
Modern collectors often assume the first year of a new design will be heavily preserved.
That expectation comes from a mature hobby culture and mass marketing by mints.
In 1840, the situation was different.
A silver dollar was primarily money.
Few recipients looked at a newly designed coin and decided to preserve an untouched example for collectors two centuries later.
The rarity of high-grade survivors reflects that practical attitude.
The 1840 Seated Liberty dollar is generally known for reasonably strong striking characteristics.
Well-preserved examples can show sharp stars, strong rims, and good central detail.
But surface preservation is another matter.
Large silver coins accumulate marks easily when stored or transported in groups.
Even a coin that never circulated extensively can acquire contact marks from other heavy dollars.
Multiple obverse dies were used for 1840 circulation strikes.
Specialists study date placement, die cracks, lettering, and other diagnostics to identify die marriages and stages.
Such research can reconstruct aspects of production that ordinary mintage records do not reveal.
Every die was a physical tool with its own working life.
Cracks and wear effectively record the stresses of nineteenth-century coin production.
During the 1840s, banks increasingly recognized the convenience of silver dollars for reserve purposes.
A dollar coin packaged value more efficiently than two half dollars or multiple smaller coins.
Demand consequently increased after the hesitant beginning of 1840.
The denomination's role was often institutional rather than retail.
This helps explain why surviving Seated dollars can show patterns of storage, export, and melting unlike smaller silver coins.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the 1840 dollar is how durable its basic design proved.
American coinage frequently changed during the early Mint era.
Yet Seated Liberty endured on the dollar for more than three decades.
The same visual family lasted even longer across other denominations.
A design introduced when Martin Van Buren was President remained recognizable through the Civil War and into Ulysses S. Grant's administration.
Also on July 31: America's First Gold Coins
The master calendar's secondary event is arguably important enough to headline almost any other date.
On July 31, 1795, the United States Mint made its first delivery of federal gold coinage.
Chief Coiner Henry Voigt transferred 744 half eagles to the Mint Treasurer.
These $5 coins were the first gold coins produced by the federal Mint.
The event occurred exactly 45 years before the first delivery of Seated Liberty dollars.
The first federal gold coin was the Capped Bust Right half eagle, also commonly called the Draped Bust half eagle in some references.
Chief Engraver Robert Scot created the design.
Liberty faces right on the obverse wearing a cap, with LIBERTY above and the date below.
The reverse shows a small eagle with outstretched wings holding a wreath in its beak and a palm branch in its claws.
Collectors refer to this as the Small Eagle reverse.
The Coinage Act of 1792 authorized gold eagles, half eagles, and quarter eagles.
Yet the Mint did not immediately produce them.
Officials responsible for precious metal were required to post substantial surety bonds.
Meeting those requirements delayed gold operations.
Silver and copper coinage came first.
By 1795, the administrative and technical obstacles had finally been overcome.
Henry William DeSaussure became the second Director of the Mint in 1795.
One of his principal goals was to begin federal gold coinage.
Robert Scot had prepared the necessary designs and dies.
The July 31 delivery of 744 half eagles therefore represented a major institutional achievement.
For the first time, the United States Mint had produced official gold money authorized under the federal coinage system.
The $5 half eagle proved remarkably durable.
Although designs changed repeatedly, the denomination remained in production—with interruptions—until 1929.
For much of the nineteenth century it was the most consistently useful American gold denomination.
Quarter eagles were smaller, while eagles and later double eagles concentrated more value.
The half eagle occupied a practical middle ground.
Its story began with those 744 coins delivered July 31, 1795.
Two First Deliveries, One Date
July 31 is therefore unusually rich in Mint history.
In 1795, the Mint delivered its first gold coins.
In 1840, it delivered its first regular Seated Liberty silver dollars.
The events were separated by 45 years but represent two different stages of federal monetary development.
The first demonstrated that the young Mint could finally produce gold coinage.
The second reestablished the silver dollar as a regular denomination with a design that would last more than three decades.
The CoinCrafters master calendar assigns the 1840 Seated Liberty dollar as July 31's primary event and the 1795 half eagle as the secondary cross-reference.
That structure is preserved here.
It also prevents the calendar from becoming dominated by the earliest possible event whenever multiple important milestones share a date.
Both stories deserve attention.
The primary article can tell one in depth while ensuring readers still discover the other.
On July 31, 1840, 12,500 newly struck silver dollars moved from production into the Mint's official delivery records.
They introduced the regular Seated Liberty dollar—a coin that would survive the Mexican-American War, the California Gold Rush, the Civil War, and Reconstruction before disappearing in the Coinage Act of 1873.
The first year's total production reached only 61,005 pieces, and high-grade survivors are now scarce.
Yet the design itself became one of the enduring images of nineteenth-century American money.
And July 31 carries an extraordinary historical echo.
Exactly 45 years earlier, 744 half eagles had become the first federal gold coins delivered by the United States Mint.
One date therefore marks two beginnings: America's first gold coinage and the beginning of its regular Seated Liberty silver dollar.
That makes July 31 one of the strongest dual milestones on the entire American coin-history calendar.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1795 — Capped Bust Right Half Eagle ($5) — First U.S. gold coin delivery: 744 half eagles