The Liberty Cap Eagle: America's First Gold Coin

In September 1795, the Philadelphia Mint delivered the first gold coins ever struck by the United States. They were ten-dollar pieces — eagles — and ten dollars in 1795 was a serious sum, more than a skilled tradesman might earn in a week. This was the new nation announcing it could mint gold to rival Europe's.

The trouble started almost immediately, and it was baked into the law. The Coinage Act of 1792 — the act that created the Mint and authorized the eagle as the country's highest denomination — fixed the value of gold at fifteen times silver, ounce for ounce. But the world market drifted toward roughly 15.75 to 1. That gap was small on paper and enormous in practice.

Here's what it meant: a $10 gold eagle held a bit more gold than $10 was worth in silver. So bullion dealers and merchants did the obvious thing. They bought eagles, shipped them abroad, and melted them for the metal — pocketing the difference. As one history of the period puts it bluntly, gold had all but vanished from American circulation by 1800. The Mint was, in effect, manufacturing export bars stamped with an eagle.

On December 31, 1804, President Thomas Jefferson ordered the Mint to stop striking eagles altogether (and silver dollars with them). There was no point making coins that fled the country the moment they left the press. America's first gold coin had lasted barely nine years. No eagle was struck again until 1838 — and only after Congress finally cut the gold weight so the coins were worth keeping at home.

The coin was the work of Robert Scot, the Mint's Chief Engraver. The obverse — the heads side — shows Liberty facing right in a tall soft cap. Collectors long called this the "Turban Head" eagle, but that name is a mistake: it's a cloth Liberty cap, not a turban. The nickname stuck anyway, the way nicknames do.

The reverse changed partway through the run, and the two versions are the heart of collecting this series.

The first design (1795 to mid-1797) is the Small Eagle: a slender bird perched on a branch, wings spread, holding a wreath. Critics of the day found it scrawny and amateurish — and they weren't entirely wrong. The Mint struck just 13,344 of these across three years, which makes any Small Eagle eagle a genuine rarity today.

In 1797 Scot replaced it with the Heraldic Eagle, modeled on the Great Seal of the United States: a broad-chested bird with the Union shield across its body, arrows and an olive branch in its talons, and a ribbon reading E PLURIBUS UNUM ("out of many, one") above. It's heavier, prouder, more official-looking — and it ran through to the end in 1804.

The obverse stars caused their own small drama. Early coins carried 15 or 16 stars, one per state as states kept joining. The Mint quickly saw the problem — you can't redesign a coin every time a state is admitted — and standardized on 13 stars for the original colonies.

This is a series where almost everything is scarce, because almost everything was melted. The eagles that survived survived largely by accident.

The Small Eagle reverse (1795, 1796, 1797) is the prize tier. With only 13,344 ever struck and most long since destroyed, even a well-worn example is a major coin. The 1795 in particular — the first US gold coin — is one of the most coveted pieces in all of American numismatics. (Its exact mintage is debated: the 1795 delivery records are tangled, and modern researchers have argued the surviving 1795-dated coins may include some struck the following year.)

Among the Heraldic Eagle dates, 1799 is the most available — a relatively large mintage of 37,449 means a few hundred survivors across all grades. The final issue, the 1804 Crosslet 4 (3,757 struck for circulation), is heavily melted and highly prized.

Then there is the legend at the top of the series: the 1804 "Plain 4" eagle. These were not made in 1804 at all. They were struck around 1834, during Andrew Jackson's administration, as part of luxurious proof sets the State Department assembled for diplomat Edmund Roberts to present to the Sultan of Muscat and the King of Siam. (A proof is a specially struck presentation coin, made with polished dies for collectors and dignitaries — never meant for change.) Mint records mistakenly suggested 1804 was the last year of the design, so officials backdated the coins to 1804. Only a tiny handful exist, and they rank among the great rarities of the entire US series.

A practical note for anyone looking at one: with values this high, third-party certification (the slab) is the norm, and the difference between the Crosslet 4 and Plain 4, or the 9-leaves and 13-leaves 1795 varieties, can swing the price enormously. On these coins, the variety attribution matters as much as the grade.