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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 25481048, member: 66&quot;]JohnMilton had most of the pieces to the puzzle.</p><p><br /></p><p>The key parts are:</p><p><br /></p><p>One the original 1878 and 1890 silver purchase acts were a sop to the mining interests to support the price of silver.</p><p><br /></p><p>Two, the Pittman act required that all the silver dollars melted down had to be replaced using newly mined domestic silver.&nbsp; I believe purchased at $1 per oz. which was well above the market price. So this was another sop to the mining interests (the government wouldn&#039;t lose anything because they sold the silver from the melted dollars to the British for $1 per oz. plus an additional charge to cover the cost of coining the replacement dollars.)</p><p><br /></p><p>After the war ended in 1918 they could have started making the replacement dollars but there was an idea floating around to have the new dollars commemorate the peace after the &quot;war to end all wars&quot;.&nbsp; But the peace was slow in coming and the economy was suffering from the withdrawal of 250 million dollars worth of silver certificates from circulation that no longer had silver dollars in the vault backing them.</p><p><br /></p><p>By 1921 they just couldn&#039;t wait for the peace any longer and they started coining Morgan dollars again (and issuing silver certificates).&nbsp; Then in late November the Peace Treaty was finally signed.&nbsp; The Mint now had to scramble to try to get a design and start production of the new Peace dollars before the end of the year.&nbsp; They wanted the Peace dollar to come out in the same year the peace was declared.&nbsp; They barely made it.&nbsp; Peace dollar production started December 28th and they managed to get a million coins made in the next four days.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, but not just silver coins all three pieces of legislation (Bland-Allison Act, Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and the Pittman Act) required the purchased silver to be coined into dollars for use in backing silver certificates.&nbsp; They couldn&#039;t use other silver coins or just the silver bullion itself.&nbsp; In 1928 when all of the dollars melted under the pitman act had been replaced Peace dollar production stopped.&nbsp; It started again in 1934 after another silver purchase legislation was passed that once again specified that the purchased silver be made into dollars coins.&nbsp; Finally in 1936 new legislation was passed that allowed the silver certificates to just be backed by the purchased bullion and they no longer had to go to the trouble of coining it.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Probably because the British needed the silver NOW! and 200+ million oz. of silver just wasn&#039;t available on the open market. Not to mention what suddenly trying to buy 200 million oz. at one time would have done to the market price.&nbsp; But they did have that silver in the Treasury vaults in the form of silver dollars.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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