The Peace Silver Dollar

Good morning and welcome to September 11th and a Terrific Tuesday! I’ve spent the past week in the Rocky Mountains, enjoying the cooler, dryer, thinner air and wearing out two pair of shoes. It was a great time and I’ve never been so glad to be home. It’s hard to believe it’s been 17 years since the World Trade Towers were brought down. So, before we jump into today’s musings, refill that cup and grab a seat. Carly Simon greets us this morning with her 1972 hit, You’re So Vain.

Gold is currently down -$4.00 this morning at 1191.40, and down -$8.50 on the month.

Silver is currently down -$0.13 at $14.04, and it’s down -0.53 for the month.

Platinum is up this morning +$2.00 at $787, but it’s down -$5 for the month.

Precious metals continue to be holding in a very tight range. I expect to see them stabilizing later this month and then grow stronger in October. But who, besides J.P. Morgan really knows?

One of my readers commented on Facebook after my last musing that his favorite coin is the Peace dollar. When readers take the time to comment, I like to show my appreciation by focusing on what their interest is. So today, let’s look at what brought about this beautiful silver dollar and its unique design. To appreciate why the Peace dollar was created, we need to go back a bit before the coin was struck – to 1918.

The year was 1918. The Great War was ending with the Allied Armies victorious. But, even prior to the war ending, Senator Key Pittman of Nevada sponsored the “Pittman Act” that authorized the conversion of 350,000,000 silver dollars into bullion and sold to Britain. These funds were then to be allotted for the purchase of domestic silver for recoinage. The silver was purchased at a fixed price of $1 per ounce; which was above the spot price and acted as a federal subsidy to the silver mining industry. As a coin collector, I find it amazing that our government melted 47% of all the Morgan silver dollars struck to fulfill this program.

As stories go, the original idea for the Peace dollar seems to have come from the editor of “The Numismatist,” the American Numismatic Association monthly magazine. The original idea was to create a “Victory” commemorative coin in the half dollar or dollar denomination. However, the last silver dollar struck had been the 1904 Morgan design and with 350M silver dollars being melted into bullion as per the Pittman Act and new dollars required to be struck, the U.S. Mint got back into action in 1921.

In order to fulfill the Pittman Act’s requirements and before a new design had been decided, the U.S. Mint began striking 1921 dollars using the previous dollar designed by George Morgan. These Morgan silver dollars had a total mintage of 86,730,000 in 1921.

But even prior to this, the U.S. Mint had held a competition and on December 13, 1920 selected a design submitted by a relatively new artist, Anthony de Francisci. At this point, the thought was that the coins should never be rare, so commemoratives were out of the question. America had seen the horrors of new technological warfare unleashed in the Great War, and the peace movement was very strong and stayed that way until December of 1941.

The new dollar was intended to show this desire for peace, and thus originally had a broken sword below the eagle on the reverse. The veterans of the war were upset with the broken sword and it was removed prior to striking. (the broken sword in the eagle's grasp is shown above left and the modified design is shown on the right) The coin’s obverse design is of Liberty facing left and the reverse showing a calm eagle grasping an olive branch (representing peace) facing east as the sun rises over the mountains signifying the dawn of a new day. Its mind blowing to think that on December 23rd of 1921, the Mint still didn’t have a working hub to create the dies to begin striking the new design, and yet by December 31st over one million had been struck. That sounds like a lot, but that’s rare enough to command at least $750 for an uncirculated 1921 Peace dollar and over $100,000 for a matte proof coin.

In total, 190,577,279 Peace dollars were struck from 1921 until 1935. An additional 300,000 were struck in 1964 at the Denver mint; however, because of the recent increase in silver spot prices, the coins were never released and believed to have melted. If an original 1964 Peace dollar was found, it is illegal to own (it was never made legal tender) and would be immediately confiscated by the U.S. Treasury.

Well, I’ll let that be it for today. Go out there and make a difference! See ya later!

*Disclaimer: Precious Metal Musings™ is written for entertainment and news purposes only and should not be used in making purchases and/or sales of precious metals.