1926 Peace dollars: "GOD"

[villa66]

I lucked into a decent 1921 Peace dollar and have been playing with it for two weeks solid. (The ;21 Peace is one of the most interesting coins in the entire American series) Along the way I learned something about the Peace dollars of 1926 that I cannot remember having read before—the word GOD in the motto IN GOD WE TRUST has been recut and emphasized.

 

I found that difficult to believe, but the examples sitting'':)  in my own collection (from all three mints) seem to confirm it, with the word GOD returning to its usual appearance the next year, in 1927.

 

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[Liutprand]

interesting question, we need to deepen!

[villa66]

Il 7/3/2020 alle 01:08, Liutprand dice:

interesting question, we need to deepen!

Here’s part of a discussion we’re having on the German forum….

 

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Mynter: “Strange, how the name of God has weakened again just one year later…[perhaps]…in 1926 they did not recut the mastertools after all?” My knowledge of the process is not deep, but the way I understand it is: the master hub makes the master die, the master die makes the working hubs, and the working hubs make the working dies. If that’s correct, the 1926 master die could be recut and GOD strengthened, while leaving the master hub untouched, which would produce a 1927 master die with the original, weaker GOD of 1925 and before.

 

Mynter: “The engraver probably started his recutting on the word of GOD because it ‘was the middle word and simply convenient’, the Red Book assumes.” This seems to be the consensus, but it does beg the question—so why then did the work stop? And I have also read speculation to the effect that it could have been underground comment on the 1925 Scopes trial (America’s infamous “Monkey Trial.” But heck, if the floor’s open for speculation, I’ll suggest my own—why not link it to the big and money-making religious movie Ben Hur, released at the end of 1925? (Which came on the heels of 1923’s big and money-making religious movie The Ten Commandments. Public or political comment—in that sort of cultural climate—about the Peace dollar’s blurred and indistinct GOD might have been heard at the Mint.

 

One last note on the motto as it was rendered on the Peace dollar, IN GOD WE TRVST. I read a very emphatic declaration by someone who insisted that the “V was for Victory.” Nope. It was just a contemporary artistic conceit, and a useful reply to the “V for Victory” thesis is the Standing Liberty quarter, which first appeared in 1916, before the United States even entered the war.

 

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Edited March 15, 2020 by villa66

[Liutprand]

Thanks, I will follow. Can you give me the link to the German site?

[villa66]

22 ore fa, Liutprand dice:

Thanks, I will follow. Can you give me the link to the German site?

Sure...  https://www.numismatikforum.de/viewforum.php?f=25&sid=c7810b1543ab97e54e2e071762810c7a'

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