1922-D Peace Dollar - Please Help

I think you're looking at partly intelligent buyers carefully paying what the coin is worth ( Peace dollars tone ugly and people won't pay), and a little auction fever. Throw the book price out. It's ridiculous. Your notes on current auctions are a little more accurate. I see a fairly strong PCGS Premium for this one, as well. My usual stop, Heritage, bears all this out and prices are all over the map. They have 158 1922-D's in MS66 in the archive, by the way.

Populations of 1922-D drop off a cliff after 66. 67 is Top Pop. Some of those auction results are people believing the coin will upgrade (or at least get a Bean or a +) and at least triple in value if they get the grade, and any "additional" thing like the bean or the + will substantially inflate the price too.

For a 1922-D in 66, you want a blast-white, accurately-graded coin and figure $1500+ in PCGS plastic. If you're good enough with grading, you can possibly score a nice crossover candidate from NGC for hundreds less.

Both Peace dollars and Morgans frequently show die cracks. It's very difficult to strike crown-sized coins over a long run without running into that. Some few are turned off by it, but not many. If you're picky about maximizing everything, stay away from the heavily cracked ones, but that is only so you can also capture those very few naysayers in the buying audience when you liquidate.

Do not consider the 57th Street hoard as an added-value feature. Those who feel like paying more for such a provenance are the mistaken ones we're trying to educate here at CCF about what's really valuable in numismatics.

I'm stretching my "normal" advice for your intent - you obviously like these coins but investment considerations play a larger role for you than some. The only real difference, though, is that I'm giving greater weight to liquidity here than I might otherwise.

I feel this way too. I don't have but 3 but I am in Love with the model on the obv.

I think it is a Beautiful coin and do not understand a lot of the dislike for the type. Or that's the general concensus I keep reading.

That's just me though.

(Edited for clarification)

Looking at the mintage of Peace dollars after 1925 there are a number whose mintage is less than a million and except for 26-S and 26-D less than 2 million. Where are these coins? I do see that the 1928 and 1934-S do go for a premium. They don't compare to the Morgans that is for sure. SuperDave, when were the Morgans melted down wholesale? Was this in the FDR administration? How accurate are the actual numbers of coins in existence as opposed to the original mintage? Collecting Morgans seems like a thing you start at age 20 and finish ten years after you retire. 8 out of the entire Peace mintages were 6 million or more. 1922 was the year they minted 51 million of the buggers and this is the coin you see most frequently being sold on ebay. If I had the cash I would just collect the Saint-Gaudens $20 gold piece. Compared to the mintage the coins from 1907 to 1925 most seem cheap. I am using the Red Book as a rough guide. I know that FDR had many of the these 1920's coins melted down, so no one really knows how many are in existence. I see that the 1913-S and 1914 have a very low mintage and yet the retail price isn't much more than other years. American Gold Eagles are selling for $1500 and Saint-Gaudens in AU condition are selling for $1625. So you can buy a piece of history for just a few bucks more than something cranked out just for goldbugs. You know many people kept a $20 gold piece on a watch fob or the top of a cane just so they would not die broke. The early jazz and blues singers mention the double eagle in many of their songs as it was a part of history in the early 20th century. As long as you had a $20 gold piece on you then you were not a vagrant even if that was all you had. That to me has a historical and cultural value that is priceless.

Half of all Morgans ever minted were melted under the Pittman Act, and the same law required that they make up that loss in far shorter time with what became Peace dollars. Having made up a substantial percentage of that by 1925 - check the mintages - they eased off somewhat because there was time left on the clock for them and pressure was easing.

The Hunt Brothers attempted a market corner on silver in the late 1970's - darn near succeeded - which spiked silver prices hard by 1980. The crash was equally hard, and silver didn't start rising consistently again until about 2000. It peaked in 2011 at 1980 levels and has halved since to 2008 levels. This is a pretty good time to get into silver.

FDR took the country off the gold standard and removed gold from legal tender status.