United States Mint Director Ed Moy announced at a meeting today of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee that the agency plans to recreate what many have called the nation's most beautiful coin ever minted-Augustus Saint-Gaudens' original ultra-high relief Liberty $20 Gold Piece. The design will be featured on a collectible 24-karat coin intended for sale to the public in 2009. http://usmint.gov/pressroom/index.cfm?action=press_release&ID=885
Nice... I may have to start saving up for one lol... Still it has to be cheaper than an original. I guess if you can't come up with any new ideas, you have to resurrect some old ones? Still, wouldn't mind having one. I wonder how the Mint plans to get around the same difficulties with producing an ultra-high-relief coin that they had in 1907? The problems they had producing it in the first place is why they reduced the relief. It was a time consuming process and put a lot of wear on the dies. If the coin is 24 carat gold, it will be softer than the originals at least, so may not wear the dies quite so quickly... but if they go with the originial relief it would still take quite a few strikes to fully strike the image. It's not precisely a recreation of the 1907 piece either... it's actually going to be a 1908 with motto, struck in high relief, for sake of including "In God We Trust" on the coin. Should be interesting to see.
AHHHH -they'l probably mint a gazillion of them and ruin it for the collector intoxication.:headbang: .....course then again, gold could be sittin on $1500 an ounce too
My joy in owning something isn't lessened by a million others owning it too... I'm a collector, not an investor. Even if it's never worth a penny over melt I would still love to own one. Pure collectors shouldn't care how many they mint; they should just care that enough are minted so they can get one.
I would want to have one. That's the closest I'll get to owning a high relief St. Gaudens. I like the idea of using Roman numerals although MMIX sounds more like a rapper's name than a date and isn't as attractive as MCMVII was on the original.
