Nice coin - personally, I can't get over how weakly struck these tended to be. It's not that I don't like the overall coin's design, I just haven't seen an original strike (not over struck or altered) that I absolutely love. Especially the reverses. Why were they so poorly struck? Was it the quality of the master's die engraving just how it was? She's a pretty one, though! ;-)
It's the design. Not enough metal on either sides causes it to look weakly struck. I love the series and the look of Liberty but they do look weak.
Your peace dollars are outstanding! They will make for an awesome collection. I recently completed a set roughly AU55-MS62 so I cannot help but envious of the luster your coins are just beaming with. Great addition and keep sharing. I don't want to stop drooling!
I may be wrong, but I think the issue was more the dies. The high relief of the original design and the fact they rushed to produce them in December of '21 made for super fast die deterioration. The reduced relief and reduced relief and again, more relief reduction to make the dies last as well as alter some of the letter. The result was a coin that appeared as softly struck with much of the original design elements blended or lost.
I'm looking for the last 2 I need at this point. They must be MS-64, PCGS and bright white. Then I'll have the entire set with those standards. I don't have an AU-MS 62 set but I have 3 sets in lower grades, Good, Fine and Very or Extremely Fine. Those are easy to put together but this set was tough.
I can't imagine how tough this current set is for you. What are your last two for curiosity? I also admire the blast white standard you are putting forth. At times I feel "toning is all the craze," but it seem to detract from the original beauty asthetic, so kudos to you! I chose mine in that grade range because people always complain, "Peace dollars are so hard to distinguish between AU and MS." I thought it would be cool and worthwhile to try to learn the difference. Only two I couldn't quite afford would be the '21 P and 28 P but do have them in XF. Again, compliments to you and your goal and I cannot wait to see the posts for the last two!
Correct, and I may be wrong, but the issue with them being weakly struck isn't a matter of "not enough metal on either side" as you mentioned in a previous post, but rather the dies kept prematurely cracking in early production. As a solution, the relief was significantly lowered to allow for the pressure to be substantial enough to have full striking capabilities and limiting cost to the mint for frequent die production. Tomato/tomata...point being the initial strikes were too hard to allow for good production standards and sacrifices were made...design relief being one of them.
