All Morgan dollar dates

1888-S Morgan Dollar

Key date

A low-mintage San Francisco issue.

Obverse of an 1879-S Morgan dollar
Representative image of the series, not of this date or mintmark. Verify the exact date, mintmark and variety on the coin you are considering.

Mintage

Business strikes
657,000
Mint
San Francisco (S)
Mintage rank
13 of 96

Rank 1 is the lowest business-strike mintage in the series. Mintage is what the Mint produced, not what survives: some 270 million silver dollars were melted under the Pittman Act of 1918 without the dates being recorded, and several issues sat in Treasury vaults for decades before release.

Reading the figure

Among the 28 San Francisco issues in the series it is the 3rd smallest. Of the 31,990,000 struck across all mints in 1888, this issue accounts for 2%. Philadelphia struck 29 times as many that year. The 1888 split ran Philadelphia 19,183,000, New Orleans 12,150,000 and San Francisco 657,000. The series median is 5,000,000, so fewer than half as many of these were struck as a typical date. In 1888 the coin was struck at Philadelphia, New Orleans and San Francisco; Carson City struck none.

Every sentence above is computed from the mintage table on this page, not asserted separately.

Scarcity tier

Key date

Assigned from reported mintage alone: under 750,000 is a key date, under 2,500,000 is a semi-key.

This is a reproducible label derived from the mintage column, not a market valuation and not a Coin Curator price opinion. The same thresholds apply to every series on this site. Several dates are far harder or far easier to obtain than their mintage implies; where that is true, it is stated above.

Recent sold prices

Last checked Sep 14, 2026 · most recent sale Sep 13, 2026

What certified 1888-S Morgan dollars actually sold for on eBay in the last 90 days, grouped by grade band. Every figure below is a completed sale of a PCGS, NGC or ANACS coin in a straight grade. This is a record of what changed hands, not a price guide, an appraisal, or a prediction of what yours is worth.

Very Fine to XF

VF20 to XF45

$173

Median of 4 sales

Lowest
$147
Highest
$210
The 4 most recent sales

Seller titles, verbatim. An ended eBay listing stays readable for about 90 days, so older links will expire.

About Uncirculated

AU50 to AU58

$298

Median of 20 sales

Lowest
$176
Highest
$425
The 4 most recent sales

Seller titles, verbatim. An ended eBay listing stays readable for about 90 days, so older links will expire.

Mint State

MS60 and above

$580

Median of 19 sales

Lowest
$360
Highest
$1,800
The 4 most recent sales

Seller titles, verbatim. An ended eBay listing stays readable for about 90 days, so older links will expire.

How to read these

  • The median is the middle sale after removing outliers. The range is every sale kept, including the outliers, so you can see how wide the market actually is.
  • Grade drives most of the difference. A band with three sales tells you far less than a band with thirty, and the count is shown so you can weigh it.
  • Sales of coins in “Details”, “Genuine” or cleaned holders are excluded, as are proofs, replicas, lots, and mounted coins. Those sell at prices that would not describe the coin on this page.
  • So is any sale priced below what this same date fetches in a lower grade, which is impossible for a real coin and is how a counterfeit in a convincing holder gives itself away.
  • 1 further qualifying sale fell in a grade band with fewer than 3 sales, which is too few to report a median from, so it is not shown.

Coin Curator does not grade, authenticate, or appraise coins, and holds no licensed price guide or population data. How this data is collected.

What to check before buying

Nothing about this date calls for a check beyond the ones that apply to any certified coin.

And for any certified coin

Verify the certification number on the grading service’s own lookup rather than from a photograph of the label, match the listing images to the certification record including grade and any variety attribution, look for cleaning, compare the mintmark against published photographs of the genuine issue, and read the return policy before buying. The grading guide covers each of these in full.

Coin Curator does not grade, authenticate, or appraise coins, and holds no licensed price guide or population data. Where this page shows recent sold prices, they are records of completed eBay sales, not a valuation of any particular coin. These are verification steps, not an appraisal.

Verify a certification number

Look a 1888-S certification number up on the service’s own site. A photograph of a label proves nothing.

PCGS cert lookup NGC cert lookup ANACS cert lookup

Each service publishes its own guarantee with conditions and exclusions. Compare PCGS, NGC and ANACS.

Find a 1888-S for sale

Opens an eBay search for this exact date and mint. Coin Curator does not list inventory, hold stock, or set prices; verify each listing, seller, and return policy directly.

Affiliate link: Coin Curator may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Disclosure.

Search eBay for 1888-S

Common questions

How many 1888-S Morgan dollars were minted?

The San Francisco Mint struck 657,000 1888-S Morgan dollars for circulation. That is the 13th lowest business-strike mintage of the 96 date and mintmark combinations in the series.

Is the 1888-S Morgan dollar a key date?

Coin Curator labels it a key date, assigned from reported mintage alone: under 750,000 struck is a key date and under 2,500,000 is a semi-key. The same thresholds are used for every series on this site, so the tiers are comparable between them. That label describes production, not market value or how hard the coin is to find today. A low-mintage San Francisco issue.

What should I check before buying an 1888-S Morgan dollar?

Verify the certification number on the grading service's own lookup page, match the listing photographs to the certification record, check for cleaning, and compare the mintmark shape and position against published photographs of the genuine issue.

Related dates

1888-P19,183,0001888-O12,150,0001887-S1,771,0001889-S700,0001886-S750,0001890-S8,230,373

Guides for this coin

All guides →
Vintage Guide

Morgan Dollar Key Dates and Varieties

The 1893-S, 1895 Proof-only, 1889-CC, and important VAM varieties show why date, mint, attribution, and condition must be researched together.

1 min readVintage Guide

Carson City Mint: Why CC Coins Command Premiums

Carson City Mint operated 1870-1885 + 1889-1893. Coins from the silver mined down the road. Low mintages, frontier-era history, and the iconic CC mint mark, the most romantic coins in US numismatics.

2 min readEducation

What Makes a Coin a “Key Date”, and Why It Drives Value

Coins from the same series can differ sharply in availability and demand. Learn how date, mintmark, variety, grade, and surfaces shape key-date research.

1 min readBuying Guide

Approachable Key-Date Coins to Research First

Seven dates that teach scarcity, identification, grade tradeoffs, and counterfeit-aware buying, without promising a fixed price or resale result.

1 min read

Mintage sources

Mintage figures are U.S. Mint production records, cross-checked against the published tables below on 2026-07-31. Where those tables disagree, the disagreement is disclosed on the affected page rather than resolved silently.

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