Yes it can mean that it is worn. The coins have soft edges rather than sharp or crisp edges and details.
The morgans that I use were worn through countless hands playing slot machines...they look great.
Mobius

Soft is David Roth's description of WELL WORN coins. A darn good description IMHO.

I have Ten Morgan Silver dollars dating back to the early 1800's. I used to use them all the time, but realized that the only people who appreciate them are magicians. Most Lay audiences have rarely or Never seen them. Heck these days nobody can tell the difference between a "Silver" dollar, half dollar or a quarter, when you are on stage. I stopped using morgans because the get dented if you drop them (or at least if you drop them as much as I) so now I have three sets of Kennedy silver dollars that I use fro the regular shows. I only use the Morgans when performing for magicians.

Morgan coins are quieter and smoother. BIG lesson learned: DON'T EVER CLEAN THEM!

Justin -

I finally found a nice looking Morgan Silver Dollar (1888) on eBay and bought it. It is the first Silver Dollar I have ever seen in real life. It is beautiful, but I have to say that, to my Norwegian eyes, it looks like a novelty coin. It is several times bigger than anything I have ever seen before, much larger than it has appeared to me in videos. It looks like a joke item.

Nevertheless, it is a beautiful piece of metal. If I am to use it, though, I will have to relearn all the palms and everything because it is so ridiculously HUGE. Maybe I'll make a belt buckle out of it or something instead.

Love the avatar, Justin.

Noobini, I'm going through the relearning process at the moment. Nowhere as bad as the first time with halves, but it takes a little repositioning.

Noobini & podcastrant:
I thought about moving to Morgan dollars too, but I am afraid my hand is too small to palm 4 of these huge coins...
I hope you will succeed in it.

Evoker,
Don't worry about palming four silver dollars. Concentrate one one. Most of the coin magic I do is with silver dollars, and only occasionally do I need to Classic Palm 4 of them or release them one at a time.

Larry

Thanks, Larry, for your advice.
I can palm one silver dollar (not as good as I do with halves) and will work on it.

Thank you again.

Does anyone have a good source for these coins? I haven't been able to find more than one or two in a coin shop, and they all want real money for them. I'm hoping to find a source that will sell them at "junk silver" prices or less. (Yeah, I know, no chance.)

Thanks.

I haven't found any "junk silver" or "cull coins" either where I live. Which, of course, is not surprising as the Dollar is a foreign currency here and would never have been anything but a collector's item to begin with.

I know that Mimesis Magic sells "soft coins" for around $18.50, which I think is OK if the alternative is a $90 mint copy. If you need more than one, then a bucket of unwanted cheap coins would indeed be worth looking for.

I paid $24 for mine, but it isn't very worn or scratched at all. I actually wanted a much softer coin. But this nice one was still a lot cheaper than the Mimesis coin with their international shipping.

The key to eBay is a good search string. You want a search that eliminates mint coins, multiple coins in one auction, coins unavailable to your region, etc. Here, for reference, is my search string:

"silver dollar" (Morgan, cull, soft) -halve -halves -mint -half -AU
Sort: Ending First, Available to: Norway, Max Price: US $50.00, Payment Method: PayPal

Hey, Noobini, that's hugely helpful. Thanks for sharing! [Don't forget to change the Norway bit, guys!]

Right. You would want more than those items that are available to Europe. I got tired of finding great things, only to learn that just a few of the sellers would ship internationally.

The Advanced Search function has many other helpful parameters, such as the ability to exclude auctions that have more than X bidders. I find that once a lot of people have gotten into their heads that they want something, they keep bidding just a little more and just a little more and the item often ends up costing a good deal more than in a regular store.

You can then save the customized search for later after having sent it, and even get email notification when such an item is posted. (That would have to be a very specific search though, or I can imagine you would possibly get flooded with emails.)

Anyway... It's all there to read and explore. I hope they add an eBay assistant someday that pops up on your screen saying, "Do you really need one of those? What's wrong with the one you have? Hmm?"

I got mine from the Seattle Coin Shop for about $6.00/ea...if they are still around. Also, I like the Morgans because they are worn and "slick". Very little talking when one slides off the other.

Noobini, $18.50 is not a bad price for a Morgan; at current silver prices, somewhere around $15-20 seems to be market price.

Kex, how recently did you obtain your coins? Nowadays, silver half dollars run approximately $5 - $6 each for common dates.

I just picked up 4 more "soft" Morgans for $37.50. The deals are out there if you are willing to look. I just go into coin shops and see what they have available. Sometimes they do not have any soft coins, but have some decent prices on some coins that are not in that bad of condition. The ones that I just picked up have some residue on them that made them a little more sticky than should be. A little soapy and water cleaned the stickiness off and left me with 4 decent soft coins. Most of the time the edges are well worn also, but so far, I have not had an issue with them. I tend to use soft and good quality coins depending on the effect I am doing.

Noobini, thanks for the search. I've found a few auctions with coins at a more reasonable price.

Wow. 37.50 for 4 morgans is a pretty good price. I got 4 last week and they cost 12 bucks each (silver prices). The coins I got are very soft and I've noticed that a couple of them almost seem to have a suction to them. Is this common to worn coins or did I just get a couple that have worn concave?

Clay

My geochemistry and crystallography is rising from the dead here. I believe that crystalline structures have an affinity between them and tend to want to cling to each other.

Then again it might be that the grime, dirt, grease, and other things coating those coins are what are making them sticky.

Many coin dealers take the junk coins and sell them for their silver content. I know of a couple shops that sell of 50+ lbs of junk silver ever week or two. You can get silver still at a decent price. What I am trying to say is that you can find "junk" coins for a decent price if you look for it.

Gold on the other hand........ I know someone that their wife gave them a $50 gold coin that is a copy of a buffalo nickle. He was carrying it around in his pocket and was doing a spellbound routine with it and a morgan. The silver and gold contrast was beautiful. That coin was worth about $750. When asked why he carried it he said that the coin was worth $50 (face value) and the gold value was about $700 at the time. Makes sense in a strange way.

I paid between $12 and $18 for my soft morgans on ebay. I bought them all from one coin dealer (Vette1986) because he offered a extremely large selection of Morgans, combined shipping for multiple purchases, and his 99.7% good feedback rating. They came well packaged and were shipped quickly. I would suggest you bid on several items within a 24-48 hour window to get the combined shipping. The dates on my soft Morgans are different and they look close (but not exactly the same)..but no one notices. The main problem that we non-coin collectors have is we don't know which ones are rare or not. Some command a high price, others are relatively cheap. Just don't bid more than you really want to spend. Here is the guy's store:
http://stores.ebay.com/Hunting-for-Treazure-Coins-and-Gems
Hope this helps
Rolly