1878 was the first year the Morgan Dollars were released and the reverse Eagle had 8 Tail feathers between the arrows and the branches as George T. Morgan had designed it initially. But there was a small imperfection. Till then Eagles depicted in US coins used to have odd number of tail feathers. Mint Director Lindermann pointed out this imperfection and it was decided to change the number of tail feathers to 7. But by then an estimated 749,500 coins were minted with the 8 Tail feathers. This variety of the Morgan dollars holds a special place among collectors as they were the first coins to get minted and the only ones to have such a unique reverse design.
In the latter part of 1878, new dies were made to show just the 7 TFs for the Reverse Eagle. There are varieties within this variety; the ‘second reverse’ in 7 TF shows parallel top 2 arrow feathers and a concave breast of the Eagle while the ‘third reverse’ shows a slanting top arrow feather and a convex breast. Across all versions of the 7 Tail Feathers the mintage was 9,759,300.
