Saint-Gaudens Gold Double Eagles (1907–1933)

Roosevelt Wrote That Federal Coinage Was Artistically Atrocious; What Saint-Gaudens Produced in Response Set the Artistic Standard for American Coinage

In December 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his Treasury Secretary: "I think our coinage is artistically of atrocious hideousness. Would it be possible... to employ a man like Saint-Gaudens?" The sculptor, already mortally ill with cancer, accepted the commission. Saint-Gaudens drew the obverse from two sources: his ultimate inspiration was the Nike of Samothrace, but the specific figure he developed came from the female form he had modeled for the Sherman monument in New York, which had been posed by Hettie Anderson, one of his favorite subjects. On the coin, Liberty strides forward holding a torch in her right hand to represent enlightenment and an olive branch in her left to represent peace; behind her are the rays of the rising sun and the Capitol dome. The reverse shows an eagle in flight from a slightly below-the-horizon perspective, the sun and its rays rising behind it. The denomination, TWENTY DOLLARS, and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA appear on the reverse. Saint-Gaudens placed E PLURIBUS UNUM on the lettered edge rather than on the face of the coin, keeping both sides free of the crowding that had burdened earlier designs. The obverse carries 46 raised stars representing the states of the Union in 1907; two more were added in 1912 when New Mexico and Arizona were admitted. Roosevelt and Saint-Gaudens agreed to omit IN GOD WE TRUST, which Roosevelt considered ill-suited to circulating coinage; Congress overruled both men and the motto was added above the sun on the reverse beginning with 1908 production. Saint-Gaudens died on August 3, 1907, and did not live to see his design released for commerce.¹

The High Relief Required Five Blows of the Press and Could Not Be Produced at Commercial Speed; Barber Lowered the Relief and Changed the Date to Arabic Numerals

The first production coins of 1907 were struck in high relief, with the date expressed in Roman numerals as MCMVII, and they required approximately five blows of the press to bring up the design fully. David Akers, writing in his survey of the series, called the High Relief "the most beautiful coin the United States ever issued for normal circulation." The practical consequence of the relief was that the coins could not be stacked properly and could not be produced at the Mint's required throughput. Before the High Relief, an even more extreme version, the Ultra High Relief, had been struck as patterns: requiring up to nine blows per coin and producing fewer than 22 examples, it was never released for commerce. Chief Engraver Charles Barber modified Saint-Gaudens' design, lowering the relief to a level that permitted single-blow striking on the Mint's high-speed presses and substituting Arabic numerals for the Roman date. The result was practical enough to remain in production for 26 years. What was lost in the translation from High Relief to commerce strikes is real; what was preserved is still the finest sustained design work applied to a federal gold denomination. The low-relief No Motto coins of 1907 and 1908 followed, and then the With Motto type ran continuously until 1916 at all three mints. After a three-year gap with no production from 1917 through 1919, the denomination resumed in 1920 and struck without further interruption through 1933.²

The Matte Proof Program Tested Three Finishes Across Eight Years and Closed Without a Successor

Philadelphia produced approximately 687 proof double eagles between 1908 and 1915, the only proof coinage of the Saint-Gaudens series. The program opened with a Sandblast Matte finish that produced uniformly textured surfaces distinct from any earlier American gold proof. Collector reception was tepid; many buyers considered the matte surfaces dull or too similar to ordinary circulation strikes. The Mint responded by shifting to a "Roman" satin finish for the 67-piece 1909 production, a smoother and lighter surface that ultimately proved no more popular than the Sandblast it had replaced. By 1910 the Mint had returned to Sandblast as the program's principal format, with a small number of Experimental Finish strikings produced during the transition. Sandblast Matte Proof remained the standard through the program's closing 1915 production, after which Philadelphia ended proof double eagle coinage entirely. Annual proof mintages were 101 in 1908, 67 in 1909, 167 in 1910, 100 in 1911, 74 in 1912, 58 in 1913, 70 in 1914, and 50 in 1915, the last figure the lowest single-year proof output in the series. Surviving examples are individually catalogued in pedigree references and trade as major numismatic acquisitions; complete proof sets of all eight years are concentrated among a small number of specialist collections.³

Building the Set

A two-type set requires a No Motto example and a With Motto example; a four-type set adds the High Relief and the Ultra High Relief. For type-set purposes, the No Motto coins of 1907 and 1908 from Philadelphia are the most available; common With Motto dates from Philadelphia in the 1920s, particularly 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1928, are the standard choices. A date-and-mint set of the regular production issues presents a different challenge entirely. The series ran without interruption from 1907 through 1916 and then from 1920 through 1933, and all three mints produced coins in most but not all years, yielding approximately 50 date-and-mint combinations for the standard business strike set.

The mint's melting programs of the 1930s created the series' major rarities not from low mintages but from high ones. The 1920-S at 558,000 mintage now survives in roughly 100 to 200 examples; the 1921 at 528,500 mintage, struck only at Philadelphia that year, survives in 75 to 150 examples; the 1927-D, despite a mintage of approximately 180,000, has only 15 to 25 known survivors and trades as the series' single most valuable regular issue outside the 1933; the 1929 at 1,779,750 mintage survives in an estimated few hundred examples; the 1930-S at 74,000 struck has 50 to 100 known survivors; the 1931 at 2,938,250 mintage survives in 75 to 150 examples; the 1931-D at 106,500 struck has 50 to 100 known survivors; and the 1932 at 1,101,750 mintage survives in approximately 100 or fewer examples. Together these eight dates define the late-date Saint-Gaudens key tier; assembling a complete date-and-mint set requires acquiring each. Documented auction records reflect the magnitude of the rarity: the Phillip H. Morse Collection 1907 High Relief Wire Edge in PCGS MS69 sold for $2,990,000 at Heritage in November 2005, and the Bob R. Simpson Collection 1927-D in PCGS MS67 CAC sold for $5,160,000 at Heritage in January 2021. Two documented die varieties belong in the specialist set as well: the 1909 9 Over 8 overdate, struck from a working die originally hubbed for 1908 and then repunched with a 1909 logotype, and the 1911-D D Over D repunched mintmark, where the Denver D was punched twice at slightly different positions on the working die. Gem (Mint State 65 or finer) examples of any date from 1920 onward are individually significant events at auction. Many coins of the later dates that are today rare in domestic collections have historically lived in European bank vaults, where they remained outside federal reach in 1933 and were repatriated over the following decades as gold restrictions were lifted. The primary specialist reference is Bowers, Q. David, A Guide Book of Double Eagle Gold Coins (Atlanta: Whitman Publishing, 2004).⁴