My 1934 Mint Set
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Updated:
2/7/2026
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1934 was an interesting year from many perspectives. Will Rogers was the host of the 6th Annual Academy Awards that year. I think most of us would agree that Will Rogers is sorely needed today; he was perhaps one of the very best humorists and astute observer of politics this country ever produced. Once he was asked with which party he was affiliated, he responded, "Well, you see, I'm not a member of any organized political party . . . I'm a Democrat." Regardless of party affiliation, there's enough truth in that to make it funny.
Another modus operandi for collecting coins in the day, less respectable, and somewhat frowned upon was the robbing of banks. 1935 saw the end of several bank robbers including Bonnie and Clyde who met their end in Texas in May of that year at the hands of a Texas Ranger. Five months later their colleague Pretty Boy Floyd also was killed by the FBI. Bank robbing had its rewards. I'm glad numismatics has its own rewards too, that differ substantially from the Barrows' and Floyd's.
The Cardinals won the World Series over the Tigers in seven games. The Tigers would return the favor next year.
Perhaps most news worthy event was the collapse of agriculture in the Great Plains, which the photo depicts in Western Kansas. Black Sunday was massive dust storm that swept across the high plains (parts of Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico). Western Kansas is the high plains, and the top soil was blown from there to destinations east and south. There is a little town on the Colorado border, called Tribune, Kansas. Next to the VFW is the only resturant in town, called "Granny's" Her menu is on a chalk board out front, and generally confined to a couple of items for each mealtime. In white painted letters above the menu is her business motto: "If Granny ain't got it, you don't need it." Granny had a western Kansas way about her.
One of her oft used expressions was "I don't have enough money to rub two nickels together." So oddly, when I think of coins, particularly nickels I think of Granny and eating hot dogs in Tribune. In 2022 Tribune had a dust storm, 500 feet high that blew through there again, I have often wondered how Granny fared or even if she was still there, thirty years since my last hot dog there.
President Roosevelt was in his first term and embarking on the New Deal, with the signing into law on June 6, 1934 the Securities and Exchange Act to provide protections so there wouldn't be a repeat of the Great Crash of 1929 (which happens to be the title of John K. Galbraith's very good book on the subject). In January of that year the Gold Reserve Act was signed into law requiring that the Gold held in the Federal Reserve be surrendered to the Department of the Treasury -- and herein is beginning one of the most interesting chapters in numismatics.
At the beginning of 1934 the effects of the burgeoning Great Depression resulted in a run on Banks, people had little to no faith in the banking system, hence FDIC was created and would start paying out claims for lost accounts at the end of that summer. Gold was $20.67 an ounce at the beginning of the year. Because banks were suspect in most people's minds, there was also concern that the paper money issued by the Federal Reserve was also suspect. Therefore, people wanted the safety of species (gold and silver) and that meant gold and silver certificates or better still coinage. The run on banks was because of a lack of confidence, that meant that same lack of confidence extended to paper money and increased the demand for gold and silver. President Roosevelt, soon after, the passage of the Gold Reserve Act, raised the price of gold to $35 to try to make the metal reflect the market price of the commodity itself. Nixon would later recognize the folly of statutorily setting the price of the dollar in gold and take us off the gold standard entirely in 1971.
Coins, albeit, a short lived phenomenon became very close to being the currency of the realm once more. Remember, if you will, that would be expected for another reason. With the downturn in economic activity, prices fell. In 1929 and we had a bout of deflation, that would last two years and result in a nearly eleven percent decline in all prices. We would not again see the price levels of January of 1934 in the CPI until the middle of World War II (1943). When there is less money to purchase goods the price declines, and when gold fell on the commodity market, that meant that the dollar was also worth less. To rectify the deflationary spiral, the President set the price of gold 70% higher than it was at the beginning of the year. No wonder coins became all the rage.
An interesting history of the Great Depression is presented by Amity Shlaes in her book "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Touchstone Books, 2007. It is a very good read.
The last two years for the Peace Dollar was this one and 1935. This set was started on October 10, 2024.
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