Peace Dollar Cheat Sheet
Notes
- Every peace dollar is 90 per cent silver.
- None were struck between 1929 and 1933.
- Peace dollars dated 1964 were struck at Denver and then melted. None was ever released and none is known to exist.
Condition
As always, condition matters when it comes to peace dollars. Peace dollars with all of their features, or with nice original lustre, should be set aside.
Dates
Dates and mint marks to be on the look out for.
| Date | Mintage | Rank | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1928 | |||
| 1927 | |||
| 1927-S | |||
| 1934 | |||
| 1921 | |||
| 1934-S | |||
| 1927-D | |||
| 1934-D | |||
| 1935 | |||
| 1925-S | |||
| 1928-S | |||
| 1924-S | |||
| 1926 | |||
| 1935-S | |||
| 1926-D | |||
| 1923-D | |||
| 1926-S |
Common Peace Dollar Errors
| Error | What settles it |
|---|---|
| Off-centre strike | Part of the design is missing and a plain crescent of blank metal is left in its place. The struck part stays fully sharp right up to where it stops.A coin ground, filed or mangled by machinery after it left the mint loses detail gradually and leaves burred metal. A genuine off-centre strike has a clean, sharp boundary and an untouched blank beside it. |
| Clipped planchet | A smooth curved bite out of the rim, with the rim flattened or the design weak directly opposite it.A coin cut or snapped after striking has a rough edge and a burr. That weakness opposite the clip is the part that is hard to fake, so if the rest of the rim is perfectly normal, be sceptical. |
| Die crack or cud | A raised irregular line wandering across the flat field, or a raised blob of blank metal over the rim where a piece of the die broke away.Raised is the die; cut into the surface is damage. If a fingernail catches in it, it is a scratch. Worth very little unless the cud is large. |
| Repunched mint mark | The mint mark shows a second, offset outline of itself, both impressions rounded and equally raised.Machine doubling is far more common and looks flat, shelf-like and shiny along its doubled edge rather than rounded. If the second image reads as a smear rather than a second letter, it is machine doubling and is worth nothing. |
| Lamination flake | A thin layer of metal peeling away or already missing, in a flat irregular patch, caused by impurities in the strip the blank was cut from.Corrosion and environmental damage look similar and are very common on coins that sat in the ground or in a damp jar. A lamination has a clean step down to the layer beneath; corrosion is pitted and rough. |
Rare Peace Dollar Errors
| Error | What settles it |
|---|---|
| 1934-D doubled die obverse | Doubling on IN GOD WE TRUST and on the letters of LIBERTY on a 1934 Denver coin, both images rounded and separated.Machine doubling is flat and shelf-like and is far commoner on this issue. The variety needs certifying before it is believed. |
| 1922 high relief | A 1922 struck from the tall 1921 dies, with the whole design standing much higher than on an ordinary 1922.Nearly every one was melted. A single circulation strike and about a dozen matte proofs are known, so a sharply struck ordinary 1922 is still an ordinary 1922, of which more than fifty million were made. |
More on the series: peace dollar.