Brian J's Silver Legacys
1921-S

Owner Comments:

The 1921-S is extremely rare in fully prooflike condition. Even semi-prooflike specimens are very scarce as quoted by Wayne Miller from his textbook. The enormous silver dollar production of 21,695,000 1921-S Morgan's produced out of the San Francisco Mint that year put a big strain on it's employees. They just did not have enough time to really get out and polish the dies when it was needed. The only time a die must have been basined and polished would be in a couple isolated cases to repair the dies or replace them. This 1921-S is showing some heavy die polishing on both the obverse and reverse with an average strike. A fully struck piece with good luster is very rare to find. Twenty-four branch mint proofs were reported struck for Farren Zerbe supposedly to compliment the Philadelphia proofs also struck for him. Less than half a dozen specimens are known and the one piece Wayne Miller has examined had little contrast. This 1921-S has nice prooflike fields with slight contrasting of the devices. The Encyclopedia of Morgan's show this being the Vam 1(Normal Die). There is a spike above the bottom crossbar on the right side of F in OF for all die varities and both 1's in the date are doubled at top left. All 1921-S dollars exibit a "micro-S" mintmark, which is even smaller than the "S" mintmark on 1878-S dollars. The small population of only 18 total prooflikes graded with NGC is proof that it is elusive with mirrored fields. The population is 4 in MS64 PL with only one graded higher in MS65 PL. Purchased from the Palm Beach Florida Coin Show through Heritage Coins 3/1/06