Last summer, everything was on 6s and 7s for me because we were getting the house tented for termites (something that is not "if" but "when" in Florida) and then we got it re-modeled. A lot of my lesser items when into storage. This summer, I've had more of chance to look at them. I bought one of the 2021 Peace Dollars because I wanted to see how the design would look fully struck. The 1921 Peace Dollars were famous for lacking design details in one place or another, usually in the centers. Here is my current type piece, which NGC over graded a bit as an MS-65. Ms. Liberty's cheek is quite smooth, but there is a mark on the neck to takes it out of the MS-65 grade, in my opinion. And here is the 2021 piece I purchased from the mint. When I put the two coins, side by side, one of the differences I noticed right away was the rim around the 1921 was far more beveled (the area from the rim around the coin to the field) than it is on the 2021. The 2021 coin was similar to the later Peace dollars, like this 1935 dated piece. It's been my observation that when the edge is beveled, as it is on the 1921, that the strike is usually weak. The was certainly the case with most of all of the 1921 Peace Dollars. My conclusion is that the modern mint corrected the medal flow error that plagued the 1921 coins, which resulted in a sharper strike. The 2021 Peace Dollar was definitely not an exact copy of the original coin. Here's another coin that is notorious for strike issues, the 1926 Philadelphia Sesquicentennial commemorative Half Dollar. You will notice a similar area between the rim and the fields.
Nice info and pictures, thanks. I've read that although all the slabs (at least all I've seen on the 2021) say high relief, but they are not high relief. The mint struck the 2021 at the same height it does all its coins. On your side by side pictures the jaw line is certainly rounded on both, but the back of the neck certainly, to me, looks higher and more rounded on the 1921 than the 2021. Is the 2021 really as high relief as the 1921?
Yea that changed as the mint needed new master tools to make the dies. It takes a lot of pressure to strike a big coin like a silver dollar. That takes a lot dies, especially for high montage years like 1922 and ‘23. One of the reasons why the Philadelphia Mint didn’t make cents in 1922 was that the facility was too busy making Peace Dollars. I have that 1935 dollar because it has a different number of rays on the reverse from earlier years. At one time I got into that much detail on type coins. I don’t do that any more.
Eye movement is the difference in these two. In fact, compared to the 1921, there's virtually no eye movement in the 2021. That's because all the detail in the 2021 is struck up at the same level. In the 1921, it's the engraver's choices, there, that set in motion that eye movement.
