#1 St. Gaudens $20 Buyer Las Vegas & Henderson

History

Made with 90% gold, (the remainder being 10% copper for durability), the Saint-Gaudens twenty dollar gold coin was minted from 1907 until 1933. The Saint-Gaudens gold pieces were minted in the Philadelphia, San Francisco and Denver mints. Many consider the “Saints”, as they are often referred to, as the most beautiful U.S. coin. According to prevalent stories and documentation, Theodore Roosevelt, the President at the time, felt that U.S. coinage had become ugly and wished for our coins to reflect artwork reminiscent of those of Ancient Greece. He commissioned a private artist, August Saint-Gaudens, to redesign our gold coinage and the rest, as they say, is history. The Saint-Gaudens twenty dollar gold piece was dubbed a “Double Eagle”, like its predecessor the Twenty Dollar Liberty. The term being used because the original Ten Dollar gold pieces were called “Eagles” and since the denomination was twice that of the ten dollar coin, the term “Double Eagle” was used.

The first Saint-Gaudens were truly an attempt to mimic Ancient Greek coins and were therefore struck in “high relief” to ensure that the images on the coin would be raised from the surface like the early Greek coins. This created a beautiful coin with the obverse or front of the coin displaying Liberty appearing to walk forward with a torch in one hand and an olive branch in the other, her dress and hair seeming to flow in the breeze. The reverse of the coin depicts a rather majestic eagle in flight above the rays of the sun. At the beginning of the first year of design in 1907, the date of mintage was displayed in Roman numerals. Toward the end of the year, the date returned to the more familiar Arabic numerals. The first year Ultra High Relief and High Relief struck coins proved unwieldy when attempting to stack the coins and were replaced later that year and to the end of the series in a more flat relief. As a result, the Ultra Relief proof and High Relief coins in mint state are extremely rare and command high values.

Value

Several factors determine the value of the Saint-Gaudens coins. First, since they are large for a gold coin, (34.1 mm in diameter and weighing 33.43 grams) and since they are 90% gold, a large aspect of their value is based purely on the gold content. While they will always have a “twenty dollar” face value, their intrinsic value is tied to their gold content, which is 0.9675 of a troy ounce. This suggests that regardless of any other factor, they will always be worth an amount equal to their weight in gold consistent with the current gold spot price or “melt value”. Other determiners of value are true of any collectible coin. These include, scarcity and condition.

Many years of the series are not particularly rare and the common dates, in moderate to mint state condition, do not carry a premium above their gold content. There are however certain semi-key dates that can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars in higher mint state condition. Finally, there are certain coins that are ultra rarities that can command hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in high states of preservation. Most notably, the previously mentioned 1907 ultra high relief proof which sold at auction in 2005 for almost three million dollars and the 1933 of which only one exists in private hands and was purchased for over seven and one half million dollars in 2002.

Because there are so many varied opinions on the condition (or grade) of a coin, the values mentioned reflect the highest retail prices that have been obtained for those coins that have been assessed by a third party grading company. Such coins have been authenticated, graded and encapsulated by expert coin grading companies to minimize any doubt as to their authenticity, quality and value and therefore their potential worth.

We Buy Saint-Gaudens Twenty Dollar Gold Coins

We want to buy your coins and as a business it is our pledge to offer you the best value for your coins, however, always remember that the prices you may find online or in price guides usually represent the highest retail value for the coin in an already certified condition. As a trusted dealer we will have our coin specialists evaluate your coins at no cost and offer you a price that is both fair for you, but that also allows us to realize a reasonable profit.