How common was it to use a $20 gold piece in everyday life?

And the half cent was made so you could give change for a real, which was worth 12.5 cents. Converting between base 10 and base 8 number systems required it.

 

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I often find "inflation calculators" somewhat questionable. I look at it this way, for a large portion of the time from at least the mid 1800's up to the 1940's a dollar or sometimes as much as two dollars a day was the typical wage of the average working man. So $20 represented about 20 days pay. Twenty days pay today would be about one months salary. Government says the average income is around $30K, that makes one months salary between $2K and $2,500. If we assume they made $2 a day back then then it would be two weeks pay today or about $1,000 to $1,250. Or split the difference and make it $1,500 to $1,875. Now I don't know about you but I really don't see a need for a coin that large and if I got paid with one it would almost certainly go straight back to the bank so I would have smaller denominations I could use more readily.

 

That is about what I have read. Any gold was quite a bit of money for an average person.

The closest analogy would be to pretend they still made $500 and $1000 bills. I would roughly equate these to half eagles and eagles, with a double eagle worth two $1000 bills. Now, how often would you wish to have $1000 bill in your wallet, knowing if you get mugged you will lose it? How many people have $1000 they wish to carry on them for no apparent reason?

That is similar to what I have read about gold coins. Most sat in banks, and were used to settle interbank transactions, and settle international payments. While someone COULD go get any they wanted, it was simply too large of money to carry around and take that risk, similar to large denomination bills.

This is why you see more wear on quarter eagles or $1 gold than other denominations. You could justify at times wanting to have say a $250 or $100 bill in your wallet, especially for presents and the like.

 

I asked my grandfather once if he turned in his gold coins when they were confiscated during the 1930s. He told me he never owned a gold coin in his life. So I don't know how freely they circulated.

 

I asked my mother [86 yo] if she remembers any gold in circulation or as use in purchases when she was young. Nope. Never even saw her parents having any smaller gold coins.

 

My grandfather told me that his father had a small amount of gold coins, as an emergency stash. My grandmother, coming from a poorer family, says that her family had a similar stockpile but instead of gold a basket of silver dollars.

My grandfather told me that he remembered when his dad turned in the coins, in the early '30s.

 

That actually sounds very plausible.

 

I think I would have been a rebel back then as I am today. Do not mess with a persons money, guns, or spouse.

 

hahaha that reminded me of what my dad told me growing up. "don't let nobody borrow your pool stick, fishing pole, or your old lady"

 

The thing is, though, is that back then no one thought twice about turning them in, as it was just money, and IIRC they were given the money back in the form of silver coins or paper money.

 

Sure it did. Back then, there were basically no other ways to handle large payments over significant distances, besides a big sack of gold or some high-denomination bills. Checks were difficult to clear outside a bank's local area.... So if you were, say, buying some real estate that wasn't located near your bank account, you might very well have paid with a few high-denomination notes.

Certainly, most people never had $500 in any form, let alone in one note. And even if you had the money to do it, you wouldn't carry that kind of cash in your wallet every day. But every now and then, there was a real purpose for these denominations.

Think about how many times in your life you've sent (or received) a high-value cashier's check, or a big-dollar wire transfer. For most of us, it doesn't happen often but it's happened occasionally. A hundred years ago, those transactions were done with big bills.

By the middle of the 20th century, there were better ways to transfer funds cross-country, and the high-denomination currency was seeing dwindling usage. The number of big bills in circulation fell by about half between 1945 and 1968:

Outstanding 12/31/1945:
903,404 $500's
797,852 $1000's
1405 $5000's
2327 $10,000's

Outstanding 12/31/1968:
488,295 $500's
291,894 $1000's
634 $5000's
383 $10,000's

That's why the Treasury didn't need to print any notes over $100 during those twenty-odd years--demand was dropping so fast that, even though some notes wore out over time, there were still plenty left to satisfy the demand. In 1969, the supply of $500's finally fell low enough that a new printing was needed; but the Treasury decided it wasn't worth the trouble, and instead discontinued the large denominations entirely.

 

I wonder if it could be possible to get to an answer by looking of the common state of conservation for the different types.
It strikes me that the eagles, half- eagles and quarteer eagles usually come in circulated grades, while especially the St. Gaudens Double Eagle appears uncirculated with bag - marks.
Does that go for the Liberty $ 20 as well ? If not, it may very well have been the case that it was not unusuall to use a double eagle for payments in the periode before WW 1.

 

Very interesting read. I only once saw a 500 $ - note, that was in a exchange - shop in Berlin. Unfortuanatly I did not have the money to buy it.

 

I disrespectfully disagree, not necessarily with the conclusion, but rather the evidence given in support thereof (assuming graded means TPG graded).

Population reports cannot be used by themselves as definitive support for any conclusion because they do not account for, in some fashion, all coins that could receive a particular grade. For example, collectors may not have a XF coin or lower graded because the slabbed coin does not bring that great of a premium in that grade (i.e. 1852 $20 Liberty Head, VF20 $1,850, XF40 $1,900, AU50 $2,000, A Guide Book of United States Coins 2013). Also, many collectors of older coins prefer unslabbed coins. Therefore, the population reports do not account for many coins that would need to be accounted for to compare against total mintage for a much more complete analysis.

Moreover, the population reports do not account for the lower graded coins, that would have been used in everyday life, that have been melted down for their bullion value or used in jewelry.

Therefore, the $20 gold piece was probably used in everyday life, just not as much as the $10, $5, $3, $2.5, and $1 gold pieces.

 

Touche, a bit at least (much more if your book expressly supports your conclusion).

However, ultimately, the burden of proof is yours because you are trying to prove $20 gold coins were not in common use in everyday life. You presented one source that discussed populations, but those population reports do not account for all such coins that would fall into that category.

Also, the ones that are graded, per the Red Book that even at XF, are only valued at $150 above spot which supports the conclusion that there are plenty of graded coins in the VF-XF categories available, hence used back in the day such that they were as common as say a $100 bill is today. Furthermore, there are probably many more that could belong in the VF-XF categories, but are unaccounted for because it is not worth it to have them graded. Also, it is hard to argue that many AG-F examples that would have been circulated, and therefore common, have been melted with the rise in the price of gold.

Ultimately, we are both asking the OP to take in all the evidence and reasonable inferences therefrom, weigh the evidence and reasonable inferences, then make a decision as to whether $20 gold pieces were common in everyday life or not.

 

I remember my Father-in-Law who was born in 1913 telling he would go with his father who was a Chief in the Navy when he got paid. He said is father was paid in gold coin. If I remember right he said it was $22 a month. This would have been in the early to mid 1920's I would imagine. He said he thought it was 4 $5 gold and 2 silver dollars for the most part. It was probably too hard to break a $20 back then. It was a lot of money.