The scarce Bryan Dollars, by Tiffany&co for the presidential elections of 1896.

That year populist Democrat, William Jennings Bryan, squared off against Republican, William McKinley. Bryan ran what amounted to a one issue campaign.

His proposal was that silver should be converted in unlimited quantities into coinage, mostly silver dollars, under the assumption that 16 parts of silver were equal in value to 1 part of gold.

According to Bryan the benefits would be that farmers and laborers would end up with higher crop prices and wages. All of this was in the wake of a fairly short but quite nasty economic recession that was called the Panic of 1893.

The Bryan Dollars, which classified into two broad classes. The most often seen are the satirical pieces which were of base metal. These pieces often featured grotesque reproduction of the Morgan dollar design. The joke was a Morgan dollar really needed to be huge to be equal in value to a gold dollar.