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From Wikipedia
The Morgan Dollar is a silver United States dollar coin. The dollars were minted from 1878 to 1904 and again for one more year in 1921. The Morgan Dollar is named after its designer, George T. Morgan, who designed the obverse and reverse of the coin. Morgan's monogram appears near Lady Liberty's neck on the obverse. The dollar was authorized by the Bland-Allison Act of 1878. It has a fineness of .900, giving a total silver content of 0.77344 troy ounces (24.057 grams) per coin.
History
The Comstock Lode, the greatest silver strike in history, was discovered in Nevada in the late 1850s. The strike put downward pressure on silver prices worldwide. In 1878 Congress passed the Bland-Allison Act which required the Treasury Department to purchase large amounts of silver, and to strike it as coins. For reasons of economy, the Treasury chose to strike the silver as dollars.
