The Most Expensive Coin: Worth Seven Million Dollars To a Coin Collector
Gold has always been fascinating to us -- gold is also the first metal known to humans. Gold coins are concentrated wealth. Read this brief history of U.S. gold coins.
Production of gold coins in the United States began as early as 1795 — not long after the Independence. However, these gold coins were made in low numbers since the supply of gold was low. For example, before 1834 the highest yearly mintage of $2.50 gold pieces was 6,812 coins.
Prior to 1849, the highest denomination produced was $10, and a ten dollar gold coin was known as an "Eagle". But as we all know, something happened in 1849: the Great Gold Rush!
Gold was found in California that year, and many thousands of people went there hoping to get rich. Then as now, the best way to strike it rich was actually to sell tools and supplies to a hungry crowd, ie. the miners.
In any case, enormous quantities of gold were recovered, and much of that gold was later used to strike coins. Since transporting the gold all the way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia was both unsafe and inconvenient, a branch of the U.S. Mint was opened in San Francisco; and now the very first 20-dollar gold pieces were also struck. These large gold coins entered the market in 1850.
Another new gold denomination was the $1 coin. It was produced between 1849 and 1889, but was not popular because of its small size. You don’t like it when a valuable coin gets lost! Back in those days, a dollar could be more than a day’s income for a worker.
For many years in the mid-to-late 1800s, a postage stamp cost three cents, or you could spend $3 for a sheet with 100 stamps. To make such transactions easier, a three dollar gold coin was minted, beginning in 1854 and coming to an end in 1889 (maybe the price of those stamps increased that year?).
Some of the most well-known U.S. gold coins are those designed by the famous artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt, he completely re-designed the looks of the $10 and $20 gold pieces.
These Saint-Gaudens gold coins, which are coin collecting favorites, were minted from 1907 to 1933; and especially the 20-dollar gold coin is famous. It is known as the “Saint-Gaudens $20 gold piece”, and the series of this coin includes one of the most rare and expensive of all U.S. coins ever produced — the 1933 $20 gold piece.
Millions of this gold coin were minted, but before they were ever distributed the President decided to withdraw all minted gold from the market. Therefore, the whole issue of 20-dollar gold coins from 1933 was destroyed. Only a few specimens survived, and one of these survivors was sold a couple of years ago in an auction to an anonymous coin collector for over seven million dollars!
There are a few more of those 1933 $20 coins around; consider yourself very lucky if you ever find one of them.
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