WHERE TO CATALOG THOSE 2021 DOLLARS?

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V25 2022 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 25, Number 8, February 20, 2022, Article 11

Those coins commemorating the 1921 Morgan and Peace dollars under the 1921 Silver Dollar Coin Anniversary Act present a quandary for cataloguers - where exactly do they fit in the American numismatic body of knowledge? Dennis Tucker of Whitman Publications tackled the topic in a recent Coin Update article. With permission, we're republishing it here. -Editor

If you've read Kenneth Bressett's history of the Guide Book of United States Coins—the recently published A Penny Saved: R.S. Yeoman and His Remarkable Red Book—you know that the Red Book's editors have always taken its content very seriously. The goal is to catalog hundreds of different coin types, spanning centuries of American history, in a logical, easy-to-digest way. The results have to be accessible for the complete newcomer to the hobby, and also valuable for the more advanced collector.

Some modern coin series are fairly straightforward, and decision-making around them is easy. Roosevelt dimes offer a good example. They've had the same design for the past seventy-five years. Each year the Philadelphia and Denver mints produce a few billion dimes for circulation; the San Francisco Mint works its magic making beautiful Proofs, in copper-nickel and silver, for collectors. This many dimes go into Uncirculated Mint sets, that many dimes go into Proof sets. Sometimes there's a novelty in the series, like West Point's two dimes minted in 1996 and 2015. But those happen just once or twice in a generation. By and large, the Roosevelt dime series is steady and predictable.

Older federal coins, and colonial coins and tokens, require more rigorous pondering and analysis of the latest numismatic research. New information can lead to reclassifications; die varieties get discovered and published; mintages and other data can change as government archives and records reveal hidden secrets.

Then there are coins like those minted under the 1921 Silver Dollar Coin Anniversary Act to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the last Morgan dollar and the first Peace dollar.

These coins have made headlines for the past year (and more). One of the big questions in the hobby community has been, Where to list them? More specifically: Where will they be cataloged in the Red Book?

The 76th edition of the Red Book, which will be released in a few weeks, classifies these coins in the Silver and Related Dollars section. They're listed as the last entry in that chapter, after the American Innovation dollars.

They're not technically Morgan dollars and Peace dollars, even though their designs are very close to the classic coins minted from 1878 to 1921, and from 1921 to 1935, respectively. They were authorized under different legislation. (And that legislation identifies 1921 as the completion of coinage of the Morgan dollar.) They're not precise copies of the older coins, but, in the words of the Act, honor them with renditions of the original designs. (The Mint's artists used modern technology and historical Mint assets to create the new motifs.) They're struck to a different fineness (.999 compared to the older .900), they have a slightly different weight, and they incorporate novel elements such as privy marks.

Furthermore, although they commemorate the original dollars, they're not commemorative coins, as Congress defines them. Since 1996, there's been a legislative limit on the number of commemorative coin programs allowed each year—two, maximum. For 2021, those programs were the Christa McAuliffe silver dollar and the three-coin suite for the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum.

They're not bullion coins. They're minted as numismatic products for sale to collectors, quite different from the American Silver Eagles made for precious-metal investment.

So what are they, inarguably? They're dollar coins—thus the Red Book classification within Silver and Related Dollars.

You'll find them on pages 252 and 253 of the 76th edition of the Red Book, almost smack dab in the middle of the volume . . . where they can keep basking in the attention they'll undoubtedly continue to receive!