It must have been a low demand year for those denominations. Often during the 1920's and especially in the early 1930's there were very little or no demand for upper denomination coins, so that only cents and nickels were minted in great quantities.
oh well that makes sense. i was just wondering if there was some bigger social/economic thing that took place.
Were even a few years where half dollars weren't minted at all, which I found out when trying to put together a year set for 1924 as a gift for my grandfather who was born that year.
Not necessarily true, as it was the era of the roaring 20's and prosperity was like no one had ever seen before. It also ushered in the period of easy credit and a lot of debt was piled up and finally go to the point where in the early 30's we had the "great" depression. Not unlike most of the european countries had already gone through in the 20's after the war. It wasn't until the 30's the the banks failed and people started jumping off the tallest buildings. No, times were relatively good during the early 20's and the new Peace dollar came into being. In fact, the mint produced more coinage each of the years mentioned than at any time prior to this period.
The actual date that you mentioned is a very strange date indeed. I do wonder if anyone really knows why some mintages were so low that year. Although pennies were still fairly high mintages untill 1922 where it dropped way down. Nickels, except the S mint were also high until later in the 20's. Dimes and halves were really low in 21 but quarters were about normal. Just need someone that was actually there to tell the truth about what happened.
There was a recession on in 1921. It was not a deep recession and was probably the result of WW I. There was also some concentration of resourses by the mint to strike Morgans at two mints. I believe these were mandated by Congress after the widespread melting of dollars 1n 1918.
i remember reading about some silver people paying off some senators ( special interest groups ) they passed some legislation that x tons of silver would be minted, and that is why they produced so many silver dollars that year and didn;t have the time to make the other denominations... I am trying to go from bad memory here... any one else read anything like this? or am i batty?
i thought so, its just a piece of info i picked up reading, to bad i didn't retain more info I am currently reading up on classic commemoratives and the history behind each coin. I love the coins but MAN was their a ton of poletickin going on
When it comes to the minting of coins, any coins, there always has been. But somehow, that is always overlooked - or ignored.
The Red Ruskiya Lady is correct. The Pittman Act of 1918 directed that "not more than 350,000,000, (thats 350 MILLION) Standard Silver Dollars be converted into bullion.... (melted). Eventually 270,232,722 were actually melted. The reason was to help Great Britain meet obligations regarding its Colony of India during the First World War. (WWI). The Pittman Act also authorized the replacement of these melted Standard Silver Dollars. This commenced in 1921, with the 1921 Morgan Dollars struck in massive quantities. The Peace Dollars also were struck begining in 1921. The remainder of the Peace Dollar series fulfilled the Pittman Act, requiring the replacement of the 270,232,722 melted in 1918. The Mint did not have the capabilities to produce the massive quantities of these silver dollars (as required by the Pittman Act of 1918) and still mint the minor coins, such as the cent, nickel, dime, quarter, and half dollar. The low mintage of all these minor coins in 1921, is a direct result of the mint having to use most of its` resources to mint replacement silver dollars for the ones melted under the Pittman Act of 1918.
Sure sounds logical to me. It is exactly what you would expect from an government agency, in that day and age.
Price changes during the 1920s are shown in Figure 2. The Consumer Price Index, CPI, is a better measure of changes in the prices of commodities and services that a typical consumer would purchase, while the Wholesale Price Index, WPI, is a better measure in the changes in the cost of inputs for businesses. As the figure shows the 1920-1921 depression was marked by extraordinarily large price decreases. Consumer prices fell 11.3 percent from 1920 to 1921 and fell another 6.6 percent from 1921 to 1922. After that consumer prices were relatively constant and actually fell slightly from 1926 to 1927 and from 1927 to 1928. Wholesale prices show greater variation. The 1920-1921 depression hit farmers very hard. Prices had been bid up with the increasing foreign demand during the First World War. As European production began to recover after the war prices began to fall. Though the prices of agricultural products fell from 1919 to 1920, the depression brought on dramatic declines in the prices of raw agricultural produce as well as many other inputs that firms employ. In the scramble to beat price increases during 1919 firms had built up large inventories of raw materials and purchased inputs and this temporary increase in demand led to even larger price increases. With the depression firms began to draw down those inventories. The result was that the prices of raw materials and manufactured inputs fell rapidly along with the prices of agricultural producethe WPI dropped 45.9 percent between 1920 and 1921. The price changes probably tend to overstate the severity of the 1920-1921 depression. Romer's recent work (1988) suggests that prices changed much more easily in that depression reducing the drop in production and employment. Wholesale prices in the rest of the 1920s were relatively stable though they were more likely to fall than to rise.
Business did not fully recover from the boomerang depression in 1920/21. Coinage production was supressed because there was no demand in commerce and it affected all denominations except the dollar. To a small extent the production of one dollar coins also suppressed the demand for halfs and quarters.
