Thoughts on this St. Gaudens double eagle

It's pretty nice for an AU. In fact, with the recent loosening of grading standards for the Saints, I feel this coin could grade MS63 right now. If the gold market turns however, the prices the coins from AU-65 would no longer be in compression, and they'd likely be harder on it when that happens.

 

If you find a dealer who handles both on a very regular basis I think you'll be fine buying raw coins from them. Dealers who handle them very regularly should be able to authenticate them well, and be able to keep an eye out for what you seek if you provide specifics.

 

Rule of thumb - common date $20 gold slabbed and graded as high as MS63 typically sells for about spot plus 10%. The reason that matters is because you can buy an XF coin and it's gonna be the same price. So keep that in mind.

As you go down in denomination for common dates the premiums above spot increase percentage wise with each denomination drop. To a degree, the $10 coins are similar to the $20 regarding XF to 63 being roughly the same price, but as I said it's a higher percentage.

The $5 and $2.50 coins though, on those there will be a marked difference in price between the circ grades and and the MS grades. That's because these smaller denominations actually did circulate fairly well where as the $20s did not. So MS examples of the small denominations are much harder to come by - and thus more expensive.

Now with better date coins all this flies out the window and grade becomes everything when it comes to price - just like it does with most other coins.

But common date $20 gold, it's basically been spot plus 10% for decades. They pretty much are and always have been treated as nothing more than bullion in grades up to and including 63.

If you're gonna collect US gold understanding all of this is pretty important or it's all to easy to over-pay.

 

Your quote made me do something something today that I have been considering doing for a a great many years - find out just how hard coin gold (90% gold) really is. But I just never took the time to do it - today I did.

Nobody ever disputes that gold is softer than silver - but that's when you're talking about pure gold and pure silver. And I guess what started me thinking about this subject many years ago was the scene that has been replayed in a thousand movies where somebody bites a gold coin. And most folks always assume that they are doing that to make sure it's real gold by biting to see if it is soft and therefore genuine. But they are not biting the coin to see if it is soft - they are biting it to see if it is hard, and therefore genuine !

And, my experience from carrying a 1 oz AGE in my pocket for about 20 years taught me that gold coins wear very, very well - and lose almost no metal (by weight) with wear even down to grades as low as F. And I think just about everybody has seen the pictures I've posted of one of those coins. But I'll post 'em again anyway.





And over the years of course on this forum, others like it, in everyday discussions in person over the years, pretty much everybody has always assumed that gold coins were soft, softer than silver coins and therefore more subject to wear than silver coins would be. And you can count me among those who made that same assumption - because gold is softer than silver so it seems to stand to reason. Today however, I was surprised.

This is why. What I found out was that coin gold (90% gold) is actually harder than coin silver (90% silver). Coin gold has a Vickers Hardness of 197, and coin silver has a Vickers Hardness of 148. So after all these years what I have found out is that gold coins aren't made of such a soft metal after all, gold coins are actually harder than silver coins. That means they are less susceptible to contact marks than silver coins are, and they wear better than silver coins. Like I said, I was surprised, but at last I had an answer as to why those gold coins in my pocket always wore so well

And no I'm not just gonna make claims like that and not back it up. I'm gonna show ya the same things I found. This for example -



And here's the link for it -

https://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl...iY5ZmU5MzgAhVwkuAKHWyfCCcQMwg_KAEwAQ..i&w=500

And for those that don't know, 21 karat gold is 90% gold - that's where the Vickers Hardness of 197 comes from.

And the 21 karat being 90% comes from here -



And the link for it -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fineness

And the number I quoted for the Vickers Hardness of coin silver comes from here -




And the link for that -
http://what-when-how.com/materialsparts-and-finishes/silver-and-alloys/

So who else is as surprised as I am ?

 

And you, either one of you, really think that makes enough of a difference to say that HV of coin gold is not higher than the HV coin silver ?

Tell ya what, why don't both of you do your own research on the subject and tell us what you find. I'm willing to learn. But the question is - are you ?

That was the whole point of my post. As I said, I myself was surprised at what I found. But I did find it, and the results show that coin gold is harder and better wearing than coin silver. While the direct opposite has long been an assumption, and obviously a false assumption, made by just about everyone.

Ya see, like I said in the beginning, nobody disputes that pure silver is harder than pure gold. But once you start making alloys - everything changes. When alloyed, gold is actually a hard and very durable metal. And when alloyed to 90%, harder and more durable than 90% silver.

At least based upon what I found.