Why This 1795 Flowing Hair Dollar’s Silver Plug Matters So Much
GreatCollections will offer a 1795 Flowing Hair Silver Dollar, B-7/BB-18, Silver Plug, PCGS AU-55 in its sale that closes on May 3, 2026. The firm places the coin in Selections from the MJ Sullivan Collection of Early Half Dollars and Dollars, identifies it as the only 3-leaf die marriage with a silver plug, and calls this piece only its second auction appearance in the modern era. GreatCollections also traces the coin through Thaler and the Dale Friend Auction of April 2022.
From Selections from the MJ Sullivan Collection
A rare 3-leaf dollar with a visible plug
Collectors chase early dollars for many reasons. This coin adds another. It preserves a rare fix from the first years of federal coinage. GreatCollections describes the piece as B-7, BB-18, R.3, then adds that the silver-plug version likely rises to R.5. Just as important, the firm says the plug shows clearly on this AU-55 example. That point matters, because some silver plugs nearly disappear after striking and toning.
The Mint’s workaround still shows in the metal
Kenneth Bressett explained why silver-plug dollars matter so much. He wrote that Mint workers inserted silver plugs into the exact center of certain 1795 Flowing Hair dollar planchets before striking them. He also noted that researchers had not confirmed the same feature on any other dollar date, that the plugs average about 8 millimeters, and that the most likely purpose was to bring underweight planchets up to legal weight.
That solution made practical sense. Mint staff could file metal from overweight blanks. Underweight blanks created a harder problem. So the Mint could cut a centered hole, insert silver of proper weight, and strike the coin. Bressett also pointed to an 1817 Lima Mint account that described a similar process. Stack’s Bowers repeats that evidence in its own reference material on 1795 silver-plug dollars.
The backstory gives this coin its punch
Here is where the story turns from technical to memorable. Early catalogers saw the feature long before they understood it. In 1907, Samuel Hudson Chapman described one of these plugged BB-18 dollars as showing a “faint nick on ear in planchet.” Later, Walter Breen recognized the plug, but he avoided that word in a 1956 catalog and used “curious oval planchet defect at centre of obverse” instead. In other words, the hobby noticed the evidence first and solved the mystery later.
That mystery lingered for decades. Stack’s Bowers notes that a profoundly double-struck silver-plug example of this variety sat in the Smithsonian’s National Numismatic Collection in plain sight for years. Then Bressett’s work gave the hobby a stronger framework. He connected the plugs to Mint practice, not damage. As a result, collectors now read these coins as artifacts of early federal problem-solving.
A pedigree that links this AU-55 to famous company
The pedigree trail around BB-18 explains the appeal. PCGS CoinFacts records the finest certified BB-18 silver-plug dollar as the Lord St. Oswald specimen, graded MS65+, which Stack’s/Bowers & Sotheby’s sold for $705,000 in the D. Brent Pogue Collection, Part II in September 2015. CoinFacts also records the Richard Winsor-David S. Wilson piece, graded MS64, at $282,000 in that same sale. Those results gave the die marriage a powerful public stage.
This AU-55 coin does not need Gem status to matter. Instead, it offers something more immediate. It lets a collector study a clearly visible silver plug, a famous BB-18 die marriage, and an early Mint improvisation in one piece. GreatCollections lists the coin under PCGS cert 42607896. For CoinWeek readers, that combination gives this upcoming lot its real wow factor: it looks like a great early dollar, yet it also preserves a hidden engineering decision from the founding era.
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