I’ve noticed that many people in the numismatic community have been very excited about the 2021 Silver Dollars. These are coins commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1921 transition between George Morgan’s Morgan Dollar design and Anthony de Francisci’s Peace Dollar. The commemoratives have been getting a lot of positive attention from coin collectors, but I believe that buying these coins is a waste of money, and that they are essentially a scam from the US Mint.
There are really six coins: the 2021 Peace Dollar (Philadelphia), the 2021 Morgan (Philadelphia), the 2021 S Morgan (San Francisco), the 2021 D Morgan (Denver), the 2021 CC Morgan (Philadelphia), and the 2021 O Morgan (Philadelphia). The Peace dollar is limited to 200,000 mintage, and each of the Morgans 175,000. This is the first major problem with these coins: Forced rarity. The coins don’t have much metallic value—I’ll get to that later—but the low mintage (1.075 million coins total) is being used to justify their $85 cost, which leads to the second problem: the overvaluation.
Each coin is made up of 0.858 troy ounces of .999 fine silver. This means that their melt value—regardless of mintage—is about 23.71. This is obviously subject to change, but that number is based off of a silver value of $27.63/oz. The Mint, however, needs to make a profit, so it’s understandable that they would sell for over spot price. However, they are $61.29, or 259% over spot. The recommended highest premium for investors is 15%. However, this premium is only for coins with no numismatic value—which is why the Mint needs to force the coins to become rare. In addition, I generally don’t like that the Mint now uses .999 fine silver for commemorative coins instead of .900. Coins in .900 silver are more affordable, and also, if the Mint wished to mimic the 1921 coins, that would be the most accurate. I also really hate the O and CC privy marks—they serve no purpose and are just another blatant cash grab. If the Mint wanted to honor the closed branches, it would have been more appropriate to make a coin like the 2006 Old Mint Commemorative.
Overall, I think that the silver dollars are only deemed “rare” to justify their cost, which is unaffordable to many, and they are just a cash grab by the Mint. They’re in the wrong format—it seems they can’t decide whether to be bullion or collectibles. Don’t waste your money on these commemoratives; just buy the real things.