Gary's 20th Century Type Set
S$1 MORGAN (1900-1921)

Owner Comments:

There are certain things that strike me about this MS-65, 1921 Morgan Dollar; the first is that I have always associated the Morgan Dollar with the American West of the 1800’s. There in the American West the Morgan Dollar enjoyed wide acceptance and readily circulated. Then at the turn of the century, just as the sun was setting on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, it was setting on the currency of the West. In 1904, the US Mint suspended coinage of the Morgan Dollar due to low public demand and a shortage of silver. The second thing that strikes me is the political manipulation of the dollar as a whole. Except for the West, the dollar has never enjoyed broad public acceptance, mainly because of its heaviness and large size. Against the public need for dollars, powerful mining interests pushed for legislation to mint dollars giving the miners a market for their silver. The 1921 Morgan Dollar is a result of such legislation. The Pittman act of 1918 called for the United States to melt down large quantities of silver dollars from its vaults and sell the resulting bullion. The US Mint in turn used the proceeds from the bullion sale to purchase an equivalent amount of silver from American miners. With the newly purchased silver came a massive issue of Morgan Dollars from each of the three branch mints. The US Mint finally closed the curtain on the Morgan Dollar in 1921 with the release of the Peace Dollar later that year. Certainly, no one can say that the Morgan Dollar did not go without a bang. I sometimes wonder how many 1893-S dollars were lost due to the Pittman Act.