1921 High Relief

The 1921 High Relief launched the Peace Dollar series with 1,006,473 pieces struck at Philadelphia, the only High Relief year of the entire run. Anthony de Francisci won the 1921 design competition organized by the Commission of Fine Arts to commemorate the end of World War I, beating seven other invited sculptors. His wife Teresa Cafarelli modeled the radiate Liberty head on the obverse, and the reverse showed an eagle perched on a rock with an olive branch beneath a rising sun. The Pittman Act of 1918 had authorized the melting and recoinage of 350 million silver dollars, which created both the silver supply and the legal requirement for the new design. The series picked up where the 1921 Morgan Dollar resumption left off mid-year.

Strike characteristics on the 1921 High Relief explain why it became a one-year type. The 150-ton striking pressure required to bring up the high-relief details broke dies after only a few thousand impressions, and a meaningful share of surviving examples show weakness on Liberty's hair detail and the eagle's breast feathers. Most 1921 High Relief examples grade VF to AU from circulation, with PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, and NGC populations clustering at MS62 and MS63 from broken Treasury bag releases. MS65 and above is genuinely scarce, and an MS67 example from the Stack's Bowers August 2018 sale at $132,000 anchors the top of the certified-population market. Counterfeit and altered examples appear regularly, so certified is the only safe purchase route at any meaningful price.

The 1921 High Relief is a Semi-Key issue and a one-year design type that every Peace Dollar collector pursues. It pairs naturally with the 1928 Philadelphia Key Date and the 1934-S condition rarity in defining the series' three weight-bearing pickups. For the design-competition story, the Pittman Act backdrop, and the unusual reverse-modification history that came to light decades later, see the Peace Dollar series history.