Q. David Bowers
No Photograph Available
Mintage
Business strikes: 316,076
Coinage Context
The Peace dollar revived: The story of the Peace dollar was not quite over in 1935. On August 3, 1964 legislation was enacted which provided that 45 million more silver dollars of the Peace design be minted. The Peace dollar was destined to cometo life again. During that year there was a nationwide coin shortage which was blamed on coin collectors and dealers. Thus, no silver dollars were minted during calendar year 1964.
The October 1964 issue of The Numismatist told of the new dollars:
Silver Dollars to be Minted:
President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 3, 1964, signed legislation providing for the first striking of silver dollars since 1935. Final details of manufacture await action on legislation now being considered which will permit use of the 1964 date for the duration of the coin emergency. Present plans call for the minting of 45 million new cartwheels at the Denver Mint, with shipment direct to the Federal Reserve Banks in the Western region of the country where this denomination is a time-honored medium of exchange.
It has not yet been determined when the Mint will start the manufacture of these new coins. Rather than making some with the 1964 date and the balance with the 1965 date, the Mint is waiting for congressional action on legislation to continue the 1964 date into the new year. If this legislation is not passed, the dollars will be minted beginning in January with the 1965 date, and none will be made in 1964.
The Mint cannot sell these dollars to anyone, nor can the mint arrange for persons to receive them. Distribution will be made from commercial banks only.
For this historic occasion the current peace design will be continued. First issued by the United States Mint in 1921, it commemorates the declaration of peace between the United States, Germany and Austria, exchanges of peace treaty ratifications having been made hi Berlin on November 11, 1921, and in Vienna on November 8, 1921, and peace having been proclaimed by the president of the United States on November 14 and 17, 1921, respectively. The last coinage took place in 1935, there having been no need for additional stocks of this denomination until the present....
A small D, the identification of the Denver Mint, also ap" peats on the reverse beneath the word ONE and near the eagle's wing. There will be no Philadelphia coinage.
All available equipment is being utilized in the program now under way to relieve the coin shortage. When the filling of 1964 orders is completed at the Mint in Philadelphia in December, Proof coin production will be suspended and the presses used in the manufacture of coins for regular use. Present plans do not include resumption of Proof coin pro-duction in 1965. The new silver dollars will not be made in Proof condition. Although no decision has yet been made as to whether the Mint will offer Uncirculated sets of coin in 1965, if such sets are made they will not include the new silver dollar.
Dollars are struck: In May 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered that pieces be struck. In that year 316,076 1964-dated Peace dollars were produced only at the Denver Mint. Great publicity was given to the new Peace dollar at the time, and expectations were that collectors would have 1964-dated Peace dollars to add to their holdings, the first silver dollar since 1935. However, the Coinage Act of 1965, enacted on July 23rd of that year, forbade the minting of any standard silver dollars for a further five-year period. Because of this and also because of the continuing coin shortage, the freshly-minted 1964 Peace dollars were ordered destroyed. No specimens were officially saved, not even pieces for the National Collection in the Smithsonian Institution.
Dan Brown, the Denver dealer, later related to me that Fern Miller, superintendent of the Denver Mint at the time, permitted Mint employees to ac-quire examples of the 1964 Peace dollar for face value, as was often the custom on new coins where it was struck. No thought was given that they would not be released. When it was determined that the issue would be melted, the superintendent requested that all pieces be returned. Whether or not any escaped has been a matter of debate ever since that time!
Numismatic Information
Commentary: The 1964-D Peace dollar has been the Holy Grail of numismatists. Does a specimen exist, and if so, where is it? Maryland dealer Bob Cohen spent a great deal of time and advertising money in the 1960s and 1970s trying to track one down, with no success.
During the course of writing this book, I was told that a qualified professional numismatist had seen one, and that Harry J. Forman knew who that person was. Harry said that he had heard that [had seen one. But, I hadn't, so the rumor came 'round full circle!
In a conversation, Marion Russell told me she believed that one was given to President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, and is probably with the Johnson papers. This information came to her from Mint Director Eva Adams. Another source, believed by me to be reliable, stated that another 1964-D dollar was sold by Eva Adams to a leading eastern numismatist. Perhaps in some future year, a 1964-D will emerge to delight a new generation of numismatists,
An interesting narrative: Thomas K. DeLorey recalled a situation which took place when he was senior authenticator at the American Numismatic Association Certification Service at ANA Headquarters in Colorado Springs: (Letter to the author, September 14, 1992.)
While I was at ANACS I talked with a visitor who saw the balance scale in the ANA Headquarters rotunda (where the scale was in the days before the addition was put on the build-ing) and said that he used to use one of them up at the Denver Mint. I asked him if he had worked there when the 1964 Peace dollars were struck, and if it were true that employees were allowed to buy them on the day they were struck.
He said he had, and that he remembered that the word was passed that any employee who wished could buy two of them from the cashier on the way out. He didn't bother, but several people did. The next day as he was coming in, all employees were told that anybody who had bought them and didn't return them would be fired. Many did, but one guy he knew said he had spent them in a bar on the way home the night before, and did not lose his job. The man was retired when I spoke to him, and had no reason to lie.
Varieties
Business strikes:
1. No die variety information available. No coin or photograph of a 1964-D is known to exist.