Hello Silver & Gold stackers! I just picked up a new coin and wanted to show it off a little.

This is a fairly common coin in both silver stacker and coin collecting circles, but let's go through the motions anyway. I'll give some basic coin stats, then we'll look at both sides, and then I'll give some more general info!

Sound fun? Let's go!

Stats

Some basic coin stats for you:

• Weight: 26.73 g
• Diameter: 38.1 mm
• Thickness: 2.4 mm
• Edge: reeded

and most importantly, it's 90% silver, so that means about 24.1 grams of silver. Woohoo silver!

Let's look at the coin a little more.

Obverse

That's the goddess Liberty wearing some kind of headband that has sun rays coming off it.

The text is "Liberty", "In God we trust" and an AF for the engraver, Anthony de Francisci.

You can see my copy is a little gunky. Also looks like someone might have tried to clean it. Lots of scratches.

Reverse

A great design of an eagle standing on a rock with sun rays behind.

With the text: "United States of America", "E Pluribus Unum", "One Dollar", and "Peace"

It's a very attractive design, one I like more than the Morgan dollar. As far as old US coins go, I usually put the Mercury dime or the standing Liberty quarter as my favorite, but this one is right up there.

It was designed to commemorate the peace follow WWI. The front side with Liberty is ok. Amusingly, one newspaper at the time said that Liberty no longer looked like a goddess but a flapper. Ha! (Flappers were the style women wore in the 1920s) But that back side with the eagle is a really great design I think. I would love to have lived in a time when these were more common.

In 2021 the US Mint started minting it again, in .999 silver. I haven't picked up one of those yet, but next time I'm in the States I want to try to find one.

I paid a little over ¥4500 (about $30) for it, which is a little on the high side for one in the quality this one is in. Melt value is $18 (around ¥3000) so you can see I overpaid for the silver by itself. But it's not often I see US coins at the coin shop here, so I wanted to pick it up.

Here it is compared with my Morgan dollar and Silver Dragon yen.

And with the dinky Mercury dime and Silver Dragon 10 sen.

Anyway, there we go. Thoughts?

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.