Well I have made it up to the dollar coins and while sorting and cataloging them I see that I have a bunch (a bunch meaning 8) of 1922 Peace dollars. While cataloging them I see that there was 35,401 coins minted with high relief (most melted at the mint) and 51.7 million at low or shallow relief. Normally I would just assume that these are of the shallow or low relief but since my grandfather (who started the collection) worked at the Philadelphia mint most of his life I though it possible that they are of the high relief. So my question is --- How can I tell which they are? The 2009 red book dosen't show how to tell. And I am not sure what high/low/shallow relief means. Thanks in advance for helping me understand the differance. Learning everyday "The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know"
Look at the numbers in the date and the ray going through the "n" in one. http://www.coinfacts.com/silver_dollars/peace_dollars/1922_peace_dollar.htm
High relief is when the design is higher than the rims on the coin. Ancient coins are high relief, for example stainless
There are some very expert discussion on high and middle relief 1922 Peace dollars. you can use search ( the box on right hand of top blue menu bar) but here is this, I consider the best. https://www.cointalk.com/threads/1922-peace-dollar-high-relief-and-low-relief-confused.46564/
Your Peace Dollar unfortunately is not a high relief. That makes your Peace Dollar worth between $15-20 or so. In order to better understand how to tell the difference between a normal Peace Dollar and one with high relief just compare a 1921 Peace Dollar(all Peace Dollars minted this year were high relief) and a Peace dollar from any other year. You will easily see the difference between normal and high relief. Good luck.
Easiest way to spot the 1922 high relief is to look at the spike just at the right of the E in LIBERTY. If the spike barely reaches the top edge of the bottom leg of the E it is a high relief. On the low relief it extends to the middle leg of the E it is a low relief. Look at the second picture posted by Kitty above and you can easily see that it reaches the middle of the E, low relief. Once you remember that you can tell the high and low relief apart at arms length. (There has to be another high relief circulation strike piece out there somewhere.)
