The largest and heaviest silver coin since the Civil War, the Morgan silver dollar is minted with 90% silver. It was minted continuously from 1878 to 1904 when the government exhausted its supply of silver bullion.For generations, one of the greatest goals among collectors has been to amass a complete collection of Morgan Silver Dollars. The incredible number of coins melted as a result of the Pittman Act has made this task a real challenge, because many of the rarer branch mint and year-date issues were destroyed along with the more popular coins. To make matters worse, the Wartime Silver Act of 1942 caused even more coins to be melted… and untold millions of additional coins were melted when the price of silver shot up to over $50 per ounce in 1979 – 80.