The 1994 Prisoner of War Silver Dollar

Some coins exist to celebrate. This one exists to build something.

In 1994 the U.S. Mint released three silver dollars at once, a package known as the Veterans Program: one for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, one for the women who served in the military, and this one — for American prisoners of war. They came out of a single law, the United States Veterans Commemorative Coin Act of 1993 (Public Law 103-186), signed on December 14, 1993.

The Prisoner of War dollar had a job to do. On top of the coin's price, buyers paid a surcharge — an extra amount baked into the sale that the Mint hands to a designated cause. Congress directed the first $3 million raised this way to the Secretary of the Interior, to help build the National Prisoner of War Museum at the Andersonville National Historic Site in Georgia. Andersonville is hallowed ground in this story: it was the Civil War's most notorious Confederate prison camp, where thousands of Union soldiers died. The museum that the coin helped fund opened there in 1998, dedicated to all Americans who have endured captivity in war.

So when you hold this dollar, you're holding a small piece of how that museum got paid for.

The obverse — the heads side — is the one people remember. An American eagle bursts upward through a ring of barbed wire, a broken chain still hanging from one leg. The whole composition reads as a single motion: captivity left behind, flight toward freedom. The word LIBERTY arcs above it; FREEDOM is worked into the design below.

That side was designed by Tom Nielsen and sculpted by U.S. Mint engraver Alfred Maletsky. (On a coin, the artist who draws the design and the artist who cuts it into the metal die — the steel stamp that strikes the blank — are often two different people.)

The reverse — the tails side — carries the proposed design of the National Prisoner of War Museum itself, wrapped in the legend NATIONAL PRISONER OF WAR MUSEUM, with E PLURIBUS UNUM, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and ONE DOLLAR. It was the work of Mint sculptor-engraver Edgar Z. Steever IV. The coin essentially put a picture of the building it was funding right onto its own back.

Here's what makes this coin interesting to collectors: it nearly flopped.

Congress allowed up to 500,000 coins. The Mint came nowhere close. The proof version — the polished, mirror-finish coins made for collectors, struck at Philadelphia and carrying a P mint mark (the small letter showing which mint made it) — sold a healthy 224,449. But the uncirculated version from West Point, with its W mint mark, sold just 54,893. For a modern commemorative, that is a strikingly small number.

That gap is the whole story. The 1994-W uncirculated POW dollar became one of the lowest-mintage silver commemoratives of the modern era (the program that began in 1982). Buyers who skipped the plain-finish coin in 1994 created a scarcity that collectors have chased ever since. The proof is common and affordable; the uncirculated coin — especially in top grade, with sharp, unworn surfaces — is the one that commands a premium.

A practical note: every example was sold by the Mint to collectors, never released into pocket change. So a worn, circulated POW dollar is unusual — most survive in pristine condition, often still in original Mint packaging.