1921 $1 Peace Dollar, High Relief

About This Note

The coin you see here is the exact coin you will receive.

The 1921 Peace Dollar in High Relief is the most coveted coin in the entire Peace Dollar series: and finding one in NGC MS66 with blast white, frosty surfaces is a genuinely rare event. This is a recently graded wonder coin, especially for a 1921 Peace Dollar.

The Peace Dollar was created to commemorate the end of World War I: the "war to end all wars." The design was the work of sculptor Anthony de Francisci, who modeled Liberty after his wife Teresa. The obverse presents Liberty's head facing right, crowned with a radiant diadem of rays, with IN GOD WE TRVST (using the archaic "V" for "U") flanking the neck and the date 1921 at the bottom. The reverse shows an American bald eagle perched on a mountain crag, clutching an olive branch: a deliberate symbol of peace: with PEACE inscribed on the rock below.

What makes the 1921 unique in the series: it was struck in dramatically higher relief than all subsequent Peace Dollars. The Mint reduced the relief beginning in 1922 to improve striking quality and extend die life. The result is that 1921 Peace Dollars are notoriously difficult to strike up fully: weak hair detail on Liberty and flat eagle feathers are the norm, not the exception. A blast white, fully lustrous MS66 example is a coin that most collectors will never encounter.

Philadelphia Mint. No mint mark. .900 fine silver, 26.73 grams. NGC MS66, Cert #6449002-001. Blast white surfaces with exceptional cartwheel luster and frosty devices. The deeply sculpted high-relief portrait gives this coin a three-dimensional presence that the later low-relief issues simply cannot match.

The 1921 High Relief is the key date of the Peace Dollar series by a wide margin. No other date in the series commands a premium remotely close to this one in high grades. For the serious collector, this is the coin that defines the set.