Look before Leaping to Sell $20 St. Gaudens Double Eagle Gold Coins

As is true even with far less valuable coinage, before you sell $20 St. Gaudens double eagle gold coins, it’s important to become familiar with the history of the pieces along with which mintages of the coins are most sought-after by coin collectors. This coin is believed by many to be the most beautiful U.S. coin ever minted, and some of the pieces are extraordinarily rare.

The $20 St. Gaudens double eagle gold coins are the only U.S. coins designed by someone who was not a U.S. Mint employee. President Theodore Roosevelt engaged Augustus Saint-Gaudens to design the gold piece with the goal of creating a coin that displayed incredibly beautiful artwork. With the President’s support, Saint-Gaudens ambitiously set out to create high relief coins, although single-strike coins were the only kind minted in the U.S. Striking high relief coins takes more time and costs more; but the coins generally have sharper details and are more visually appealing than single struck coinage.

There is quite a bit of drama in the history which precedes the minting of the St. Gaudens gold coin. Ultimately President Roosevelt had to concede that it was necessary to have a design which could be minted with a single strike. Because of delays related to the controversy and the designer’s declining health, the first of the $20 St. Gaudens double eagle gold coins was not struck until after St. Gaudens died. The design was altered before being struck, since the original version required up to 11 strikes and didn’t stack well for banking purposes.

The St. Gaudens $20 gold coins were minted from 1907 to 1933. There were several alterations in the design which affected the rarity of various mintages, including:

• When the coins were first released, they did not include the words “In God We Trust” because of a specific request by President Roosevelt; he felt that it wasn’t appropriate to refer to God on money which could be used for immoral purposes. Americans made an indignant outcry over the omission, and the motto was added to the coinage in mid-1908, by act of Congress.

• After New Mexico and Arizona became states in 1912, the coins were changed to increase the number of stars from 46 to 48.

• In 1909 the only significant variety of the series occurred; an overdate in which an 8 is seen under the final 9 occurred. It’s speculated that about half of the 161,282 $20 gold coins struck in Philadelphia in 1909 display the error.

Among the rarest St. Gaudens $20 double eagle gold coins are the following:

• The coins were routinely minted until 1933; very few of the coins were minted that year before legislation initiated a gold recall. Very few St. Gaudens double eagles from 1933 made their way into circulation, and those that did are valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• In 1907, only 12,367 of the coins were struck.

• During the Great Depression in 1929, the coins were still minted; but they were held in U.S. Treasury vaults, for the most part. Experts estimate that fewer than 2,000 1929 Saint-Gaudens double eagle gold coins exist today, and the rest of them are reported to have been melted by the government in the latter part of the 1930s.

When you are trying to sell $20 St. Gaudens double eagle gold coins, you will likely find plenty of willing buyers. Because of the potential value of the coinage, it would be best not to rush the process. While you could sell through an auction, it would involve a steep fee; and the method is notoriously unreliable. It’s usually best to sell to reputable rare coin dealers, since only numismatists can truly appreciate the value of such an exquisite coin. Atlanta Gold & Coin Buyers