The U.S. Peace silver dollar were minted beginning just after the end of World War I — “the war to end all wars” — and was thus came to be known as the “Peace dollar.” It was minted from 1921 through 1935 to the same specifications as its predecessor, the Morgan silver dollar, and too, traces its ancestry to the legendary Spanish 8 reales that circulated in the American colonies prior to and during the Revolutionary War.

The coins were minted at the Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco mints and over its lifetime roughly 190 million of the coin were produced. Of that number, experts believe that almost 80% of the Peace Silver Dollars were melted. In one notable instance, the government ordered the melting of 50 million silver dollars to provide electric conductors for the Manhattan Project in 1942. Many of the coins melted were believed to have been Peace dollars.

The official silver to gold ratio during the period of the coin’s production was sixteen to one meaning that the federal government officially sanctioned a monetary value of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold. The coins routinely trade individually, in rolls of twenty coins and bags of 1000 coins. The coin was designed by sculptor Anthony de Francisci. The obverse bears a representation of Lady Liberty similar to the Statue of Liberty and the reverse depicts an eagle perched on rock carrying an olive branch.