1907 High Relief, Wire Edge

A thin, raised ridge of metal pushed up around the rim distinguishes the Wire Edge from its Flat Edge sibling. This ridge formed on the earliest 1907 High Relief strikings, when the die and collar allowed gold to extrude vertically during the five-blow striking sequence the design required. Production began at Philadelphia in late 1907 after Saint-Gaudens' August death, and the Wire Edge represents the earliest rim profile struck from the MCMVII high-relief dies. Mint personnel subsequently tightened the collar to yield the broader Flat Edge, which handled and stacked more reliably. The 12,367 combined mintage for 1907 High Relief covers both rim types, with the Wire Edge a distinct minority among survivors. Many pieces were returned to the Mint, damaged in handling, or subsequently melted, and the net survival rate runs below what the raw mintage alone would suggest.

Authentication begins at the rim: a genuine Wire Edge shows a raised, knife-thin ridge at the outer perimeter on both obverse and reverse, uniform around the circumference rather than limited to a single arc. Those rims are fragile. Even otherwise problem-free coins often show small rim nicks, light filing, or minor bends that a novice can overlook, and a PCGS or NGC examination catches these reliably. The High Relief design itself attracts counterfeiters at lower-grade price points, and raw coins therefore carry a meaningful risk of undetected problems or outright fakes from overseas sources. On honest examples the strike is typically complete, and wear shows first on Liberty's forward knee and breast and on the high feathers of the eagle. Collectors attribute rim types in-hand by viewing the coin edge-on, though a certified slab resolves the question without physical contact.

The Wire Edge is the scarcer of the two 1907 High Relief rim varieties and commands a premium over the Flat Edge at every equivalent grade. The series record for the issue stands at $2,990,000, paid for a PCGS MS69 from the Phillip H. Morse Collection at Heritage in November 2005. That result is not a speculative outlier but a reflection of what a single finest-known example of the United States' most admired circulating design can bring when it appears. Routine Mint State examples trade in the middle five figures, with the price sensitive to eye appeal, rim integrity, and strike completeness rather than precise grade designation. Given the counterfeit environment and the rim-damage question, the acquisition path is a PCGS or NGC-graded piece, with CAC approval where available. For the broader production history of the denomination and how the 1907 issues opened the series, see the St. Gaudens Gold $20 Double Eagles history article.