Coin Collection - US $20 Gold Pieces
The $20 gold piece (Double Eagle) is a big chunk of gold. Each one contains almost a full ounce of pure gold. Over the years, the U.S. Mint made millions of Double Eagles, requiring a huge supply of gold. Fortunately, the United States had been blessed with an abundant supply of the beautiful yellow metal, but such was not always the case. In fact, until gold was discovered in California, the Double Eagle was just a dream.
Today, the glittering golden Double Eagle is still a collector's dream.
Liberty-head $20 gold piece (1849–1907)
The Liberty-head Double Eagle was designed in 1849 and first appeared in commerce in 1850 following the discovery of gold in California. So much gold was found and the need for coins was so great that the U.S. government decided to create two new denominations — a $1 gold piece and a Double Eagle. The new Double Eagle features a head of Liberty on the obverse and a large eagle and shield on the reverse. Many dates sell for only a slight premium over their metal value, so collectors find them appealing to collect.
Saint-Gaudens $20 gold piece (1907–1933)
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. These are the words to describe the design on the Double Eagle created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1907. Fortunately for collectors today, a high percentage of the original mintages still exist. Many Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles ended up in storage in European banks; over the years, they have filtered back to the United States. Thus, a common Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle can almost be considered a bullion coin, as the premium over the face value is small in many cases. However, other dates remain great rarities, despite high original mintages.
The following highlights set the hearts of many collectors a-flutter.
1907 extremely high relief: The first design efforts by Saint-Gaudens featured an unusually high relief or ultra high relief as it is sometimes called, meaning that the distance between the highest and lowest points of the coin was greater than usual. The result is stunning. However, because of the extra amount of time and effort required to make the coin, mint engravers lowered the relief before any were made for circulation, adding extreme rarity to these early versions. Perhaps there are a dozen or so of these in existence today in several varieties.
1907 high relief: The modified version was nearly as impressive as the extremely high relief because the depth of the details was still greater than on any other coins struck for circulation. The U.S. Mint made slightly over 11,000 high reliefs before throwing in the towel and flattening the design even further. As popular as the Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles are, collectors love the 1907 high relief the best.
However, just recently, the one legal, non-Smithsonian example was sold a public auction for $7.9 million, and ten more were voluntarily turned into the Treasury by the granddaughter of the owner. The ownership of these coins is being disputed in court as of this writing.
Questions and Answers
The $10 gold piece (Eagle) is the bedrock of U.S. gold coins. When the government first devised a list of the different coins for production, the Eagle was chosen as the flagship for the gold coins, and most other gold coins were either fractional or multiple versions of the Eagle.
Before new coins are created, the U.S. Mint creates patterns: trial pieces that test how a particular design will appear in real life and whether any technical problems will develop as the coin is struck.
The first discoveries of gold in the United States were not in California, as you may have guessed, but in North Carolina and Georgia. Local private minters turned this gold into coins to help alleviate the need for money in the region, especially because most of the output of gold coins from the U.S. Mint was melted for its bullion value as soon as the coins hit the streets.
Proof is a process for making coins specifically for sale to collectors. In modern usage, proof coins are those struck using specially prepared blanks, highly polished dies, multiple strikes, and extreme pressure.
This article is about the world's ten most expensive coins. There are lots of ways to protect these puppies, but you're going to need some serious coin holders to displays them.
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