Question About Peace Dollars Ending After 1934

For the same reason why Ike dollars failed, they are too big to carry arround in mass quantaties.

I wish they would get rid of the dollar bills. Unlike dollar bills, dollar coins we don't owe interest on.

Actually they stopped making them in 1935.

The Peace dollars were never actually intended to be a circulating coin. (Well the idea behind them originally was to make a circulating coin to mark the return of peace after the end of the "War to end all wars" but it didn't work out that way.) The Peace dollars were struck to replace all the silver dollars melted down by the Pitman Act of 1918. Since the dollars melted under that act were used to back some 250 million dollars in silver certificates, those notes had to be withdrawn when the coins were melted and the metal sold to England. The Act called for the replacement of those coins and once they had struck enough Peace dollars to match what was melted the coining stopped. That was in 1928. In 1934 the government did another silver interest bail out purchasing silver to try and support the price(Thomas Amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of May 12, 1933. For a year the government would buy ALL the domestically mined silver for 64.65 cents an oz. The current market price was 41 cents an oz.). Half of that silver was earmarked for being made into silver dollars . Once again to back silver certificates. The silver purchased under that act created the 1934 and most of the 1935 Peace dollars. A further 52,029 1935 silver dollars would be made from silver purchased under the Silver Purchase Act of June 19, 1934. (This act would eventually lead to the Treasury acquiring over two billion oz of silver.) Once the dollars earmarked under those act of 1933 and 1934 were struck no more were made because the silver certificates could be backed just as well by the silver bullion as they could by coins. (Even though the government was paying over the market price for the silver they was striking the coins and backing the certificates at $1.2929 per oz, so for every dollar they spent on metal they could issue TWO dollars in paper.) And of course the public would rather carry the paper dollars than the heavy clunky silver dollars. And as long as they were exchangeable at par on demand why not carry the paper.

I thought the last effort to create the dollar coin, the golden dollar ad they seemed to spend a lot of $$ on, would work; I would have used them if they had worked in our parking meters, pretty much the only chnage I use these days.

Don't we have this debate about whether or not we should get rid of the dollar bill and go to dollar coins in another thread?

Personally I hate the small dollars. I am collecting them only because they are being made, and some others do like them. I wish they would go back to the old dollars. Them being big is a good thing IMO. Obviously I am in the minority, but so be it.

Yes there is one year where they made actual Peace dollars in (i believe) 1964.

"None has turned up for 33 years and none may turn up for 33 years more," Forman said. "If one of these coins ever did turn up, I think it would be seized and in all probability placed in the Smithsonian. That's my guess."
http://www.pcgs.com/articles/article337.chtml

Personally I like the new prez dollars. They're not very attractive, but they are relatively light to carry, and I've no problem with using them. As for being a waste of money ... what have we done as coin experts to persuade our congressmen to change the pertinent laws? Complaining here is pretty much useless, IMHO.