The Double Eagle: America's $20 Gold Coin

It started with gold pulled out of California rivers.

When the 1848 strike at Sutter's Mill turned into the Gold Rush, the country suddenly had more bullion than its coins could absorb. The largest gold piece in circulation, the ten-dollar eagle, was no longer big enough for the scale of the new money. So Congress acted. The Act of March 3, 1849 — signed by President James K. Polk — authorized two new coins: a tiny gold dollar and a giant twenty-dollar piece worth two eagles. The name wrote itself: the double eagle.

It was the largest gold coin the U.S. Mint made for everyday commerce, carrying nearly a full ounce of gold — 0.96750 troy ounces, to be exact. One coin held a working man's monthly wage. For the next eighty-odd years the double eagle was how America moved serious money: bank reserves, international settlements, the gold that backed the dollar itself.

That long life gave the coin two completely different faces. For nearly six decades it wore a stately Liberty designed by a Mint engraver. Then, in 1907, a president and a sculptor tore that up and replaced it with what many still call the most beautiful coin the country ever made. And in 1933, with the nation in the depths of the Depression, the government killed it — and turned its own coin into contraband.

There are really two Double Eagles, and they look nothing alike.

The Liberty Head (1850–1907). James B. Longacre, Chief Engraver of the Mint, designed both sides. The obverse — the "heads" side — shows Liberty in profile, facing left, wearing a coronet reading LIBERTY, ringed by thirteen stars for the original colonies. The reverse carries a heraldic eagle with a shield and the motto E PLURIBUS UNUM. It came in three flavors collectors call Type 1, 2, and 3. Type 1 (1850–1866) had no religious motto. After the Civil War, the Act of March 3, 1865 let the Mint add IN GOD WE TRUST to gold and silver coins; it landed on the double eagle's reverse in 1866, creating Type 2. In 1877 the denomination, once abbreviated TWENTY D., was spelled out as TWENTY DOLLARS — that's Type 3, which ran to 1907.

The Saint-Gaudens (1907–1933). This is the famous one. President Theodore Roosevelt thought American coins were ugly and said so. In 1905 he personally recruited the era's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to redesign the nation's gold — Roosevelt called it his "pet crime." Saint-Gaudens gave the obverse a full-length Liberty striding toward the viewer, torch in one hand for enlightenment, olive branch in the other for peace, the Capitol at her feet and the sun's rays behind her. The reverse shows an eagle in flight over a rising sun. The figure traces back to his Sherman Monument and, behind that, to the ancient Nike of Samothrace. Saint-Gaudens was gravely ill by then; his assistant Henry Hering prepared the final models, and the sculptor died in 1907 before he saw the coin reach the public.

He wanted it in towering relief — the design standing up off the surface like a sculpture, not a stamp. The Mint's presses hated it. The first ultra high relief pieces needed up to nine blows from a medal press to bring up the detail, which was hopeless for mass production. So the relief was lowered in stages. One more controversy followed: Roosevelt had deliberately left IN GOD WE TRUST off the coin, believing it cheapened the Almighty's name to stamp it on money used by sinners. Congress disagreed, and the motto was restored to the reverse in 1908.

The Double Eagle is one of the great collecting fields in U.S. coins precisely because it ran so long and ended so dramatically. A few landmarks:

1849 — the unique pattern. Only one example was struck and survives, held in the Smithsonian's National Numismatic Collection. It is not for sale at any price.

1854-S. The first double eagle struck at the new San Francisco Mint, born straight out of the Gold Rush that made the coin necessary. A storied early rarity.

1861 Paquet Reverse. A redesigned reverse by Mint assistant Anthony Paquet was abandoned almost immediately. A tiny handful of Philadelphia pieces survive, making it one of the most coveted Liberty Head rarities.

1870-CC. The first double eagle from the frontier Carson City Mint, with only 3,789 struck. A blue-chip "CC" key.

1907 Ultra High Relief. Saint-Gaudens' design as he truly intended it, struck only as patterns — roughly two dozen pieces are believed to exist. When examples appear at auction they bring sums in the millions. The more practical 1907 High Relief, with a reported mintage of 12,367, is the coin most collectors dream of actually owning.

1933 — the coin that was illegal. First struck on March 2, 1933. Days later, Franklin Roosevelt halted gold payments, and by year's end Americans were ordered to surrender their gold coins. The 1933 double eagles were never officially released; nearly all were melted. A small number escaped the Mint, and the government spent decades pursuing them. After a 2011 court case, ten seized examples were ruled government property. Exactly one 1933 Double Eagle has been ruled legal to own privately — the piece once owned by King Farouk of Egypt, sold by Sotheby's in 2002 for about $7.59 million and again in 2021 for $18.9 million, the highest price ever paid for a coin.

A note on grades. Double Eagles were heavy circulating money and bank reserves — they got bag-marked, shipped, and stacked. Pristine, fully struck survivors are genuinely scarce, especially for the high-mintage 1920s dates, because millions were melted in the late 1930s after the gold recall. That combination — large original mintages, massive melting, and hard handling — is why a common-date Double Eagle in top grade can be worth a large multiple of its gold value.