This is part of a series of blog posts I wrote for a coin collecting site circa ~2015 that seems to have disappeared off the Internet. Note any prices mentioned in this series are from 2015.
It was the very last circulated silver dollar ever produced by the US Mint. It’s not a particularly expensive series to acquire – the key dates do tend to be pricey, but the series is so much shorter, after all, and nothing like the complexity of Morgan dollars.
But it has an astounding story to tell.
- Composition: 90% silver, 10% copper
- Weight: 26.73 g
- Mintage: 1921 – 1928, 1934 – 1935
- Designer: Anthony de Francisci
The Peace Dollar series (1921 – 1935) is a coin that continues to hold fascination for generations of collectors. It has a such a unique place in history, that no other coin has quite the same character. It’s the only coin to exist solely for the purpose of upholding a congressional act. The Pittman Act, a promise to re-coin those silver dollars which had been melted down for the WWI effort, did not specify a coin at all, only that the silver bullion had to be collected and distributed.
This is a coin literally birthed by the will of the people, starting with Frank Duffield’s article in the November 1918 issue of The Numismatist and later echoed by Farran Zerbe addressing the American Numismatic Association in 1920. Both called for a coin to commemorate the peace after World War I, and producing a new silver dollar was also a legal obligation of the Pittman Act. The Pittman Act had been created to assist our WWI allies, the UK, with their silver stock to alleviate financial concerns. Over 270 million Morgan dollars were melted down into bullion and sold to the UK, with the stipulation that they’d all have to be replaced once the war was over. As long as they “owe” us a silver dollar, reasoned the numismatic community, why not create a really good one?
It was impractical to go on minting the Morgan design anyway. The original dies for the Morgan series were all destroyed in 1910, when the series ended. The 1921 Morgan dollar was only possible because the original designer, artist George T. Morgan, was brought in to recreate the design from scratch – and this time without model Anna Willess Williams available to pose for him! They obviously couldn’t go on like this.
The Peace dollar stands as one of the boldest designs ever created in US coinage. To gaze upon its edifice, with a larger than life eagle reverse and its deep-cut Lady Liberty obverse, is to be reminded of the 1927 Fritz Lang film Metropolis, whose look, said Lang in interviews, was inspired by a visit to New York City in 1924. The Peace Dollar’s design is a stylish art deco motif done at the onset of popularity for the aesthetic. The flared rays, filling the background on the reverse and echoed in Liberty’s crown on the obverse, are a key signature element of art deco. It speaks of skyscrapers and polished steel, an era if infinitely expanding process promised as the end product of the industrial age.
Little did they know how short-lived the peace would be – and for that matter, considering the Great Depression, how short the prosperity would last either. But never mind, it was now the Roaring Twenties in North America and the UK, and the United States had a great decade to kick up its heels and enjoy the spoils; plenty of these Peace dollars would trade hands under many a happy circumstance. But 1929 would come soon enough, and it would be time to pay the proverbial piper.
In hindsight, the Peace dollar has a poignant, naive aspect. How far had the United States come at that point in history, and yet how much farther would it go through from then? The Peace dollar traveled in the pockets of an entire nation whom did not yet know the name of Adolf Hitler, but had seen at least one Felix the Cat cartoon on its first run.
As far as collector’s value goes, lower grades are available almost for their bullion value except for a couple of key dates, while MS-65s tend to get more expensive and harder to come by the later in the series you go. But every time you touch a Peace dollar, you’re touching a decade in history trapped in silver. It smells of flappers and jazz.
5 Cool Design Elements of the Peace Dollar
The design elements and details are striking, being very different from any other U.S. coin produced. For one thing, the design process was open to a contest conducted by the Treasury Secretary. A commission was formed just to review the results and select the winner. The idea of minting a coin specifically to mark the end of WWI didn’t even originate within government, but in an article by Frank Duffield writing for the November 1918 issue of The Numismatist. Few government efforts would be… “crowdsourced” as much as this one, to borrow a word coined nearly a century later.
Liberty’s radiant crown
Those shining spikes of light coming off Lady Liberty’s brow are officially called a “radiant crown,” using a tradition going all the way back to ancient Roman, Grecian, and Egyptian coins which depicted various rulers with a similar spiky crown. The spikes are meant to represent the sun’s rays. However, the geometric, measured rays on the Peace Dollar are modernized into the style of Art Deco sunbursts and Streamline Moderne motifs – compare the geometric lines of the spire of the Chrysler or the cover art of a copy of Atlas Shrugged. It’s a luxurious design motif from an age of optimism that now has a cool steampunk vibe to it.
The model was Teresa de Francisci
Italian-American sculptor Anthony de Francisci wasn’t the least bit shy about suggesting whose face was fit to serve for the model of Lady Liberty; his own wife Teresa would sit for the portrait. During the sculpting process, Anthony opened the window so the breeze would stir his wife’s hair while he worked.
The “Peace” mountain almost wasn’t
The original design for the reverse was to have depicted “a large figure of an eagle perched on a broken sword, and clutching an olive branch bearing the word, ‘peace’.” However, the dollar was attracting so much public attention that this ignited a huge controversy. Just like a modern day Facebook argument where trivial disagreements are blown up into major debate, long letters to newspaper editors denounced the broken sword motif as a symbol of weakness, defeat, and dishonor. The new design was hurriedly cranked out as a mountain with the word ‘peace’ on it, in an act of blandest possible mass appeasement.
The olive branch is a political statement
The eagle in the official Presidential Seal of the United States is show with outstretched talons clutching a bundle of arrows on the right and an olive branch on the left. The eagle is show facing to the left. Translation: The United States favors peace, but is always prepared for war. However, the eagle show on the reverse of the Peace Dollar has abandoned those arrows. Probably after the hubbub about the broken sword, nobody wanted to get another one started with the arrows.
“In God We Trvst”
Yes, that’s intentional. Blame populist design, the ‘V’ is synonymous with both the ‘V for Victory’ and the two-fingers peace sign, flashed the world over in photographs. Somebody thought it would be a cool idea. It’s a charmingly dorky detail now, summing up with a single typographic quirk the ephemeral innocence possessed by the world between the years 1918 and 1939.
All in all, the Peace Dollar is an intriguing moment preserved in history. How very different were those times; and yet how very like us the people of those times were.
