Silver Dollars Minted 1905-1920

There was no demand for them. The U.S. government had many millions of unused and unwanted silver dollars sitting in their vaults.

The Morgan silver dollars were made to provide a market for the silver lobby's product. The western mines were producing far more silver than the nation needed at that time, and the silver lobby got the U.S. government to buy up millions of dollars worth of silver every month to support the market. The dollars were struck and stored away. Some people in the western states wanted them, but they were of little interest to those who lived in the rest of the United States.

The 1918 Pittman Act had the government melt a substantial number of those "obsolete" coins so that the silver recovered from them could be sold the British for use in India. That act called for the replacement of those dollars with new ones which became the 1921 Morgan dollars and the Peace dollars.

This is just thumbnail sketch of the history. Some day when I have more time I might write more, but this gives you an idea as to why there were no dollars produced from 1905 to 1920.

Morgan's were made 1878 to 1904, and 1921. Peace dollars made 1921-1928 and in 1934-1935. Obviously the Great Depression halted production from 1929-1933 as with many low mintage production

Thanks Bstrauss for the link.

As has been the case with every dollar coin since these also - never wanted, never used. Collectors like them.

The Morgan dollar came about due to the Bland -Allison Act that required the mint to buy a huge amount of silver every month and coin it into silver dollars. This was done to soak up the excess silver being produced out west to try and artifically support the price. The price of silver continued to fall though so in 1890 the Bland-Alllison Act was replaced by the Sherman Silver Purchase Act that mandated an even larger monthly purchase of silver, and once again required it to all be coined into silver dollars.

There was a flaw in the Sherman Act though. The silver was purchased with a new currency issue, the Treasury Coin notes of 1890, that were redeemable in either silver or gold. But the metal value of the gold the notes could be redeemed for was greater than the metal value of the silver sold to the government. So it became a very large and steady drain on the government gold reserves. (Almost all of the issued 1890 Coin notes issued were immediately redeemed for gold making them fairly rare today. By 1896 less than $2 million of the over $200 million in issued Coin notes were unredeemed.) By 1893 the gold reserves dropped below the legal minimum threshold of $100 million and the government was in danger of having to default on its foreign obligations that HAD to be paid in gold. This lead to the repeal of the Sherman Act, but not before it resulted in the Panic of 1893, a financial depression lasting at least three years.

But even with the purchase part of the act repealed the government was still obligated to convert all the silver it had already purchased into silver dollars. Finally in 1904 the last of the Sherman Act silver was coined and production of silver dollars ceased. That's why there were no dollars coined from 1905 to 1920. No demand and no mandated silver buying or coining. Since the coins themselves weren't wanted they were used as backing for silver certificates.

Then came the Pittman Act of 1918 that required the melting of up to 250 million silver dollars with the silver being sold to Great Britain. But it also required that all the melted silver dollars be replaced with newly mined domestic silver to be purchased at a rate of $1 per oz, another guaranteed price support for silver which until that time was around 90 cents per oz. The replacement of those dollars began in 1921 with Morgan and then later Peace dollars. The production of Peace dollars ended in 1928 when the last of the coins melted under the Pittman Act were replaced.

In 1933 the government went on another silver buying spree purchasing the silver with silver certificates and then coining the silver into dollars to be held as backing for those certificates. Finally in 1935 the law was modified to allow the certificates to be backed by the silver bullion itself instead of dollar coins and the production of the Peace dollars came to an end.

There is an unfilled market for 1905-1920 silver dollars. The China mints are dropping the ball.