USA Double Eagle Coins

Double Eagle coins are one of the most sought after U.S. gold coins. Double eagle coins were produced from 1907 to 1933 by the U.S. Mint. There are several things about these coins that have made them a United States national treasure.

The first thing about the double eagles are their thickness. Double eagles are twice the thickness of a regular USA eagle gold coin. Then there is their quality, they are ultra high relief coins that proved very difficult to manufacture. The double eagles are also important because they were designed by famous american sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. In addition Saint-Gaudens passed away from Cancer shortly after designing the double eagle coins, making the coins all the more unique and irreplaceable.

Original Double Eagle coins

Saint Gaudens was commissioned to design the coins in 1907 by U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt. The sculptor was already famous for his civil war sculptures. He was seen as the best candidate to improve the look of the nations coins.

Saint Gaudens design was beautiful but it proved tricky to make in great numbers. The 34 millimeter diameter super high relief coin was just too much for the press technology available in that era. The U.S. mint made 19 test coins before deciding that the coin was just too hard to make for mass production.

Saint Gaudens resized the coin to a smaller 27 millimeter and tried a new idea that involved fusing two gold eagle coins together in the press. This new coin was given the nickname "double eagle". The first "Double Eagles" were not put into production, and all were supposed to have been melted down. Even the process was not perfect, it showed promised, so yet another design was attempted.

The last attempt at creating the "double eagle" returned to the original 34 millimeter diameter design but the coin was made with less relief. Finally making this coin proved to be a success and 12000 coins were minted. Apart from not having the high relief of its prototype, the coin still had many of the original designs features such as the romans numerals used for the year of stamping. The face value of the coin was $20.00, twice as much as the regular $10.00 gold eagle.

A new 20 dollar gold coin

A second production run of 361,000 coins was made later in 1907 using arabic numbers instead of the roman numerals. These Saint Gaudens double eagles are worth anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 today. In 1908, the inscription "In God we trust" was added and in 1914, the number of stars on the coin was increased to 48 from 46. The double eagles continued in production until 1933

In 1933, the USA abandoned the gold standard. By presidential decree, all existing gold coin inventory including the double eagles was supposed to be melted down. There were many investors and collectors in Europe who still kept their double eagles and other US gold coins but all that is known is that only a single 1933 coin survived. That 1933 Double eagle is the most valuable united states gold coin. When it surfaced and was identified it sold at auction for $7 million. 10 More are supposed to exist but as yet the coins have not been authenticated.

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Double Eagles for 2009

In 2009, the U.S. mint will issue a twenty dollar gold coin to commemorate the work of Augustus Saint Gaudens. On May 2, 2008, the U.S. Mint reported that Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson has given the go-ahead for the one-ounce, ultra-high relief, 24-karat gold coins dated 2009.

These new coins will go on sale in early 2009 and continue to be minted as long as their is demand for them. The coins will be 50% thicker than any existing U.S. Gold coins, so that the high relief of the original Saint Gaudens design can be accomplished. With modern press technology, we will now be able to see the full impact of Saint Gaudens design. It's likely making them twice as thick as an eagle gold coin is impractical today because of the high value of gold.

Surely some of these new Saint-Gaudens commemorative "double eagles" will be showing up on Ebay in 2009 and most likely will be a very hot item. Perhaps not as valuable as a 1907 Saint Gaudens original but they will definitely sell for thousands of dollars. They will have great appeal to coin collectors, art collectors ans the general public.

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