Trade dollar

'420 GRAINS, 900 FINE.' — it declares its own weight and fineness on the face of the coin, and signs itself below with 'TRADE DOLLAR'. It is a silver coin for trade, born in the era of the coinage law of 1873 that took the standard silver dollar off the list. Liberty, seated on a bale, holds out an olive branch and faces the sea. A country that had begun its daily life on somebody else's silver, the Spanish dollar, was now trying to send silver of its own out across the sea. This piece is dated 1884. In the middle of the thirty years' war between gold and silver, silver was fighting for its place both inside the country and outside it.