The Saint-Gaudens double eagle is a twenty-dollar gold coin, or double eagle, produced by the United States Mint from 1907 to 1933. The coin is named after its designer, the sculptor Augustus Saint- Gaudens, who designed the obverse and reverse. It is considered by many to be the most beautiful of U.S. coins. The 1933 double Eagle is among the most valuable of U.-S. coins, with the sole example currently known to be in private hands selling in 2002 for USD 7,590,020.
About Saint-Gaudens double eagle in brief
The Saint-Gaudens double eagle is a twenty-dollar gold coin, or double eagle, produced by the United States Mint from 1907 to 1933. The coin is named after its designer, the sculptor Augustus Saint- Gaudens, who designed the obverse and reverse. It is considered by many to be the most beautiful of U.S. coins. The 1933 double Eagle is among the most valuable of U.-S. coins, with the sole example currently known to be in private hands selling in 2002 for USD 7,590,020. The double eagle was first issued in 1850; its congressional authorization was a response to the increasing amount of gold available as the result of the California Gold Rush. The design was modified several times, but the coin was most often used for large international transactions. In the West, where gold or silver coins were preferred to paper money—use of which was illegal in California in the aftermath of the Gold Rush—the coins saw some circulation. The coins proved controversial as they lacked the words ‘In God We Trust’, and Congress intervened to require the motto’s use. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt sought to beautify American coinage, and proposed Saint- gaudens as an artist capable of the task. The work was subject to considerable delays, due to Saint-gaudens’s declining health and difficulties because of the high relief of his design. In 1907, after designing the eagle and double Eagle, but before the designs were finalized for production, the coins were struck for the remainder of the 19th century, though the design was not widely circulated.
In 1892, Saint-Gsaudens was asked to design the official medal of the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago; it would be presented to prizewinning exhibitors. His reverse, which featured a torch-bearing naked youth carrying wreaths to crown the victors, was attacked by the censoring postal agent, Anthony Comstock, as obscene. The exposition directors hastily withdrew the reverse design and replaced it with one created by Charles E. Barber which, according to numismatic historian Walter Breen, was “not only for banality only, but also for banishment” A decade later, the Mint refused all commissions with its employees, and refused to work with them for the next decade with all commissions that might involve him. In 1903, Mint Director George E. Roberts wrote to President Roosevelt, asking permission to employ a man like Saint Gauden to design a coin. Roosevelt replied: “I am extremely interested in the designs of the new coinage. Would it be possible, without permission of Congress, to give us a coinage which would have some beauty of some beauty?’” The coinage was struck that year, and it is still in circulation today, with a face value equivalent to several hundred dollars today, but was the coin most often use in international trade, in which settlement was to be of gold.
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