Amassing the 1921 Silver Dollar - A Key Date within the Peace Dollar Series
Until 1921, no new silver dollars had been minted in the United States since the 1904 Morgan Dollar. Demand for silver dollars was low & there was no need for any additional mintage. The combination of a piece of legislation called the Pittman Act & the desire for a coin to commemorate World Peace after the end of WWI in 1918 set the stage for the 1921 Peace Silver Dollar to be released.
The Pittman Act called for 350,000,000 existing Morgan Dollars to be melted for bullion & for Congress to purchase the equivalent amount of silver from US mines at a fixed cost of 1 an ounce. this silver was to be used to mint a like number of new silver dollars, & the resulting 23 cent difference per dollar being considered a subsidy to the country's silver producers.
The Morgan Dollar was minted at all 3 mints in 1921 to the tune of around 86 million coins. At the same time the new Peace Dollar was being designed by Anthony DeFrancisci, a noted designer of medals. his design was decidedly different from previous designs in a couple of notable ways. first, his depiction of LIBERTY faced left instead of right as she did in the Morgan Dollar & Barber coins of the era, & she wears a crown of rays around her head. his Eagle is at rest with wings folded on the reverse, rather than in flight as or with wings spread as in previous coin designs. The Eagle stands on a mound with the word PEACE on it, with rays extending out from the mound. The most distinct difference was the relief of the coin. being a designer of medals DeFrancisci used the high relief design that a medal would bear, something not yet tried on a US coin design.
Once the Peace design was ready, mintage of Morgans was suspended & 1,006,473 1921 Peace Dollars were struck at the Philadelphia mint. this was the only year that the coin was not minted at least 1 of the other 2 branch mints, making the this 1921 silver dollar the only design not to bear a mint mark. In subsequent years the mint mark would appear on the reverse under the Eagle's tail feathers. The coins were very detailed because of the high relief, but this also made them difficult stack & the design was changed to low relief in 1922 & from then on the coins had a standard low relief.
The combination of its low mintage, unique high relief design, & first year of release makes the 1921 Peace Dollar a very collectible & very desirable coin. The design was halted after only seven years in 1928 due to the requirements of the Pittman Act being met. It made a brief reappearance in 1934 & 1935 before being once again discontinued. It was the last true Silver Dollar design in the United States, with the Eisenhower & Susan B. Anthony Dollars being clad with no silver content.
Collecting the 1921 Silver Dollar - A Key Date in the Peace Dollar Series
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