1964-D Peace Dollar...What Could Have Been?

No pictures of any 1964 Peace Dollar tooling or coins have ever been released, as far as I can tell. I assume that someone now has pictures of the recently-discovered tooling, but that hasn't been released yet.

I don't think the original plan was to ever strike Morgans in Philadelphia and Peace in Denver. I think they would have gone with only one design to discourage coin hoarding at the time (ultimately, it was decided that any silver dollar would be hoarded too much - so none were issued).

When the US Mint was instructed to make preparations for striking 1964 silver dollars, they were not told what design to use. So the Mint evaluated using either of the two most recent silver dollar designs, going to actual production with the Peace design.

 

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Then what would the purpose of making the Morgan tooling have been? Seems like a lot of wasted time, effort and money if it was for nothing. On the flip side though...it seems wasteful to have two different designs. From a designer and fabrication standpoint...can you think of any reason why to create all the tooling for a second design?

 

If they were contemplating an issue requiring Congressional approval, far better to have physical examples of the proposed coin ready to show when they ask. The development cost could be sunk into "training."

 

There is no way of knowing unless Mint correspondence turns up in the future, but perhaps the Mint intended to strike both.