After the armistice of November 1918, collectors and editors began calling for a coin to mark the peace. The idea reached the House Committee on Coinage, and in late 1921 a design competition picked the work of Anthony de Francisci, a 34-year-old Italian-born sculptor. President Warren G. Harding approved it on December 19, 1921. De Francisci's wife, Teresa Cafarelli de Francisci, sat as the model, though he described the face as a composite meant to look American.
His finished reverse showed the eagle with a broken sword. Advance publicity drew complaints that a broken sword stood for defeat, so the Mint reworked its hubs, and Chief Engraver George T. Morgan removed the sword without de Francisci's approval. Philadelphia struck the first coins on December 28, 1921, and finished 1,006,473 pieces dated 1921 before the coins went out on January 3, 1922.
The new dollar arrived as part of the Pittman Act recoinage, which replaced the silver dollars melted in 1918-19. Output peaked at once: Philadelphia struck 51.7 million dollars in 1922, the most of any Peace dollar issue, and yearly totals shrank after that, with Denver striking none in 1924 or 1925. The recoinage ran through 1928, when the Pittman silver ran out, and no dollars were struck from 1929 to 1933. Depression-era silver politics revived them. The 1933 Thomas Amendment let war debts be paid in silver, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered that silver coined into dollars, and a broader Silver Purchase Act followed in June 1934. All three mints struck dollars in 1934. Only Philadelphia and San Francisco did so in 1935, the last year.
One more chapter came three decades later. In May 1965 Denver produced 316,076 Peace dollars bearing the 1964 date, and every one was melted before release.
