NEW GOLD DOUBLE EAGLE RESURRECTS 100 YEAR OLD DESIGN
When Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ first envisioned his now iconic design for the Double Eagle, it wasn’t the way we see it today. His design was the same, but the coin itself would have been stamped in ultra high-relief; something that required at least eleven strikes per coin. So the ultra-high relief was scrapped in 1907 and it was minted with Saint-Gaudens’ design, just without the dramatic effect he had wished it to have.
Today though, his vision has finally been realized. At the mint in West Point, NY, the Double Eagle has been minted for the first time in ultra-high relief. According to the New York Times:
“These new coins, slightly more than an inch in diameter, use the smaller, thicker blanks rejected in 1907, are dated MMIX (2009), and contain exactly an ounce of 24-karat gold. The original coins were slightly larger in size and contained 22-karat gold but modern investors prefer pure gold, which also has the benefit of being soft enough to turn into these ultra-high relief coins.
The first $20 coin will be placed in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. The rest, which will be produced for only a year, go on sale to collectors and investors in January, at a price still to be determined, based largely on the current bullion price of gold.”
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Augustus Saint-Gaudens, double eagle, gold, gold double eagle. American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution