The most artistic coins?

Another member suggested I start this thread so here it goes! What is your favorite coin design artistically speaking? I'll start first. I REALLY like the walker. What a stunning design! There is no boring element to be found! I wish our "dead president" coins of today had the same flare!! I also really enjoy the indian 2.50. What a neat idea to sink the design!! This kept the coins looking fresh as well!

Ok ...your turn!!!

 

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Well, I really like the Bust Coinage (my avatar), preferably Flowing Hair types but I didn't have a picture of that to use.

 

I suppose artistically, it would be hard to beat this design:

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But any coin with relief is better than the flat, lifeless slugs we are talked into collecting today.

 

This one is widely regarded as one of the best US coin designs of all time.
Believe it, or not, I actually agree.

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enough said how can anything ever beat this coin, in my heart i know i love it dearly, fantastic marvelous, extreme,exciting,historical,genius,quaility like no other this and the gothic crown as well.This is a pic of a exact copy by the way i couldnt find the real one on google though its an exact coepey seoe yoeu can see what its realy about surely no-one can beat this and one day i will own one of these in a great grade if in surely lucky.

 

Hate to be trendy here, but the High Relief Saints are the prettiest coins I have ever seen.

 

No discussion of how beautiful the Walking Liberty halves are is complete without reference to the 1897 Roty design - Marianne the sower - which appeared on a number of French coins, and probably gave Weinman his inspiration:



(Thanks to forum member Cladking for the beautiful picture of a coin he formerly owned.)

 

For US Coins:

Saints
Walkers
Standing Libs (esp. Type I - a bold artistic statement for the time)
Peace Dollars
Draped Bust Coinage (esp. Silver Dollars)
Capped Bust Coinage (esp. Halves)
Buffalo Nickels

Note that most are from the golden era of coinage (early 20th Century), now relegated to bullion coins in favor of the low relief dead presidents.


World Coins: I am not familiar with these and just discovering them. The gothic crowns are very stunning coins, especially for the time (mid 19th century). There are many others, which I cannot name, but just wanted to mention that there are many world coins out there which will give the US "classics" a run for there money, design-wise!!

 

my favorite designs are the seated liberty, the walking liberty, the standing liberty, the st gaudens double eagle, the flying eagle, the buffalo, and the morgan....they ALL float my boat *swoon*

i don't know enough about international coinage

 

Any and all walking liberties have got to be the best, silver bullion coins, half dollars, quarters, you name it. But, any coin with lady liberty on it is beutiful.

 

I agree with Pennycase...it is the reason why I especially love the 1986 to present Silver dollar PROOFS of this coin.

 

Great thread guys! So do you think we will EVER go back to intersting designs on circulating u.s. coinage? I personally feel that it won't ever happen because now coins are only seen as a way to pay respect to a dead historical figure in this country. That is not a bad thing in itself but quite frankly, a pictue of SBA is simply...well....not that stunning is it?!

 

Well, because politics is so entwined with coins now, we will be seeing dead presidents on circulating coinage for the foreseeable future. Hopfully they will leave the bullion coins alone!!!

About 2 months ago there was a good thread going regarding the ill-conceived Presdential Dollar series, in which GDJMSP posted a nice liberty design for the dollar that ND presented to Sen. Mike Castle of Delaware. By the way, ND, where does that stand now?? Hopefully it, and the proposed Reagan dimes and $10 bills, are dying slow deaths.

 

I agree with Jimmy on that Gothic Crown, i have had the pleasure of holding one in AEF... and it was stunning.

I think St. George slaying that Dragon is also a decent piece of artistry. (Not exactly my fave design as i'm more into the shield variants, but it's still very hard to draw!).

For me though the artistry definately goes to the hammered gold sovereign of the 16th century i've seen nothing as beautiful anywhere in my entire life! Gorgeous coins.

But i'd be quick to point out here that GD's French ransom coin is well up there with the beauties!

 

For US coins though... hmm, i like the $10 Indians!

 

Actually, the woman who modeled Sacagewea was beautiful...but the coin really didn't capture her beauty as beautiful as she is!

I like the SAC reverse. I can't get enough of those eagle reverse designs. It represents everything that America is about...Freedom, Grace, Majesty and Strength. I also like the color of the SAC. There are differant shades of the "golden" color just as we see differant shades of Lincoln red pennies when they are first circulated. Some are more yellow and some are orange/yellow in color. Who knows what they would eventually look like if they were truly circulated.

[Of course, the only way to have a successful dollar coin is to drop the paper dollar that lasts no more than 16 months in circulation...but we have posted that thread a number of times before.]

I am all for our founding fathers to grace our coins because without their sacrifice (many with their lives), we wouldn't have a country where we can post praises and complaints about everything from coins to politics.

I still love those standing Liberties that grace our silver coins...especially in proof!

 

Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy were not "founding fathers." You might stretch the case for Lincoln. Franklin was on the Half, of course. What did FDR sacrifice?

Even so, I believe that the founders of our nation -- the "fathers" as well as the "mothers" (it was Samuel AND Abigail Adams; George AND Martha Washington) -- all would have been shocked and disappointed to see our money today. They preferred allegorical Liberties, not people, as symbols of our republic.

Michael

 

I wrote about the Walker, the Peace Dollar, the Buffalo Nickel, and other coins for the ANA Numismatist. The research I did revealed some facts that were surprising to me.

You know, it is really funny, but as much as we praise the Walking Liberty Half and the Peace Dollar and other issues, they often were reviled in their own time. Even Di Francisci, the designer of the Peace Dollar, denounced the product of the Mint as not his intention for the design. The reverse was the workd of George Morgan, actually, not Di Francisci.

When it came out, the Walker was criticized in the pages of The Numismatist because, among other things, it looks as if Liberty's toes are being burned by the sun.

The execution of that coin demonstrated why the Mint did not like outsiders working on projects. If you look at a high grade Walker, you will see that Weinman did not allow for metal flow. Miss Liberty has only a lobster claw for a hand holding the bouquet.

The Walker is an excellent coin. I am not arguing against your opinion. I only point out that what we regard TODAY as beautiful is not what people back then thought. Therefore, I ignore denunciations of the Sacagawea and other modern coins. Let time tell.

Michael

 

And, speaking of the $20 of Augustus Saint Gaudens, here is a picture of the statue that he cribbed the design from:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/z/x/zxk105/group14/nike.html

This statue was excavated only in the 1870s, I think, and was not widely known when Saint Gaudens used it first for his statue of General Sherman and then for his coin.

It is a nice coin, but typical of American designs, it is a knock-off. In fact, most American coins are re-drawn Greek and Roman coins. If you take the "New Style Tetradrachm" of Athens ---

(www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/attica/athens/Thompson_028.jpg)
(www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/attica/athens/Thompson_028a.jpg)
among many others ---

and change the helmet to a native American war bonnet, you have the same coin. The Large Cent, the Seateds, they are copies of coins that the US Mint has had in it own collection of ancients. In colonial times, educated people could read Greek and Latin and many of them owned classical coins.

The Standing Liberty Quarter might have no predecessors.

Barber's series is a direct copy of the contemporary French silver coins.

Nice coins, all of them, to be sure, but they seem astounding to us only in comparison to what we have now.

Michael