A Guide to Collecting Chopmarked US Trade Dollars by Date and Variety
This site is intended to be a quick reference field guide for those interested in collecting chopmarked trade dollars. The information provided is believed to be accurate and is supported by thorough research. However, this is not intended to be an exhaustive or scholarly reference. There are a number of resources listed below but a special recommendation is made for the excellent reference book US Trade Dollar: Rarity, Collection Types, and Top 37 Varieties by Joe Kirchgessner.
Chopmarked trade dollars have a fascinating history not replicable by any other US coin series. Every example is unique in the variety, quantity, and placement of its chopmarks. There is no better example of a coin that was used exactly for the purpose intended. This makes the series extremely interesting and satisfying to collect.
The total population of chopmarked trade dollars in all conditions is approximately 10,000-15,000 coins, with scarce and rare dates aplenty. For comparison, that is roughly the same population as the 1893-S Morgan Dollar, which is the key date to the Morgan Dollar series. Many collectors believe the trade dollar set is incompletable due to the unavailability of one of the key dates.
A favorite quote authored by Bruce Morelan (Legend Collection) is that “the only thing rarer than trade dollar varieties is trade dollar variety collectors.” For the interested (and the masochists), there are many fascinating varieties for such a short lived series. The guide here details all obverse/reverse type hub combinations. However, only the most interesting and visible varieties are detailed here. There are plenty of additional interesting die cracks, mint mark sizes & placements, and miscellaneous collectible die conditions.
Assembling this guide and considering the scarcity of some of the referenced coins, and how difficult they can be to find, brings to mind the opening paragraph of David Goodstein’s States of Matter. “Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.”
Now it is our turn to collect chopmarked trade dollars.