1889-S Morgan Dollar

Key date

A low-mintage San Francisco issue that is nonetheless available, as much of it escaped the later melts.

Mintage

Business strikes: 700,000
Mint: San Francisco (S)
Mintage rank: 15 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 4th smallest. Of the 34,651,000 struck across all mints in 1889, this issue accounts for 2%. Philadelphia struck 31 times as many that year. The 1889 split ran Philadelphia 21,726,000, New Orleans 11,875,000, San Francisco 700,000 and Carson City 350,000. The series median is 5,000,000, so fewer than half as many of these were struck as a typical date.

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.

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 publishes no price or population data. These are verification steps, not a valuation.

Verify a certification number

Look a 1889-Scertification 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 1889-S for sale

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

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Common questions

How many 1889-S Morgan dollars were minted?

The San Francisco Mint struck 700,000 1889-S Morgan dollars for circulation. That is the 15th lowest business-strike mintage of the 96 date and mintmark combinations in the series.

Is the 1889-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 that is nonetheless available, as much of it escaped the later melts.

What should I check before buying an 1889-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.

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 read Vintage 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 read Education

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 read Buying 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.

Wikipedia, "Morgan dollar" mintage figures table — Cites Yeoman (A Guide Book of United States Coins) and Van Allen & Mallis.
CoinMintages.com, Morgan dollar mintages — Lists business strikes and proofs separately, including the 1878 tail-feather varieties.
GovMint, Morgan silver dollar mintage chart — Published as sourced from U.S. Mint records.

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