Out of the Great War
When the guns of the First World War finally fell silent in November 1918, America wanted more than a treaty. It wanted a symbol. Within the coin-collecting world, an idea took hold: the nation should mark the return of peace the way great nations always had, in silver. At the American Numismatic Association's 1920 convention, numismatist Farran Zerbe delivered an influential appeal for a coin commemorating peace, and the idea gathered momentum in Congress and at the Treasury.
The timing was perfect. Under the Pittman Act, the Mint was already obligated to strike millions of new silver dollars to replace those melted during the war. The dollars had to be made either way. The only question was whose face they would wear.
The sculptor and his bride
A design competition in late 1921 invited America's finest sculptors to submit concepts. The winner was a 34-year-old Italian-born artist named Anthony de Francisci, the youngest competitor in the field. For his radiant Liberty, crowned with spikes of light like the Statue of Liberty herself, de Francisci needed a model, and he found one at home: his wife, Teresa Cafarelli de Francisci, who had emigrated from Italy as a child and reportedly once posed in imitation of Lady Liberty aboard the ship that brought her to America.
The reverse shows a bald eagle at rest on a mountaintop, gripping an olive branch and gazing into a rising sun, above a single word cut into the rock: PEACE. No other United States coin, before or since, has carried that word.
Too beautiful to strike
The first Peace Dollars, rushed into production in the final days of December 1921, were struck in dramatic high relief. The design was stunning, and it was a manufacturing nightmare. The deep contours required extra striking pressure, wore out dies at an alarming rate, and often left the centers of the coins soft and incomplete. In early 1922, the Mint lowered the relief for practical production, which is why the 1921 high-relief issue stands apart as the sculptural masterpiece of the series and one of its most desired coins.
The Peace Dollar has one of the strangest epilogues in American coinage. In 1965, the Denver Mint struck over 300,000 Peace Dollars dated 1964, intended to be the first silver dollars in three decades. The plan was abruptly cancelled, and every coin was ordered melted. None are known to legally exist today, making the 1964-D Peace Dollar one of the great phantom coins of U.S. numismatics.
Fourteen years of silver
Peace Dollars were struck at Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco from 1921 through 1928, then again in 1934 and 1935 after new silver purchases briefly revived production. When the presses stopped in 1935, an era ended with them: the Peace Dollar was the last silver dollar the United States ever struck for everyday circulation.
The series is short, just 24 date-and-mint combinations, which is a large part of its charm. A complete collection is a realistic lifetime goal, and every album has the same famous gatekeepers: the 1921 high relief, the low-mintage 1928 Philadelphia issue, and the elusive 1934-S in higher states of preservation.
The centennial return
In 2021, one hundred years after the first Peace Dollar left the presses, the U.S. Mint issued new commemorative Peace Dollars honoring the centennial of the design, alongside its sibling, the Morgan. The revival introduced de Francisci's radiant Liberty to an entirely new generation of collectors, and confirmed what collectors had known for a century: the Peace Dollar is one of the most beautiful coins America has ever made.