My first Double Eagle! :)

Gam3, here are some key factors that determine eye appeal and appearance for Saints:

• Die wear (older dies produce less detail)
• Luster: the steel die being stressed over time would get microscopic imperfections that transmitted to the struck Saint.
• Copper Spots: possibly caused by gold purity and silver and other metal contamination of the newly-struck coins.
• Black Spots: copper oxide, found on older coins when metal heating processes were less advanced than today.

Those are easy to see, these areas should be looked at closely for Saint striking quality:

• Wear on high points like Liberty's knee and Eagles wings
• Any wear or dents on rim
• Hands on torch and hair strands near torch should be well-defined.
• Is torch and flame fully-formed or "smushed" ?
• Fingers on torch should be well-defined.
• Toes inside sandal on rock should be visible (5).
• Stars should have raised outline and flat center though this is hard to see on all stars and most coins. Flat stars = bad (but often normal for Saints).

 

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Good for you! Congratulations on the acquisition.

 

I’m surprised the Europeans didn’t melt them down and re-coin them.

When James Smithson left his fortune of over £100,000 to the US to found the Smithsonian Institution the British gold sovereigns were melted down and re-coined into about $500,000 in American gold currency.

It makes me wonder why Europeans would leave Double Eagles in their vaults as Double Eagles xD.

Technically the Brits could re-coin Double Eagles into quintuple sovereigns and have even fewer coins to deal with since the gold £5 had 1.1775 troy oz of gold in it vs 0.9675 troy oz for the $20 double eagle.

 

The UK did to an extent, other countries not as much.

To use in settling trades with other banks in Europe and/or to return send back to the U.S.

I think you are right.

 

Gam3, an interesting note on Saints in bags (250 count or $5,000 face value): they tended to move alot more when sent to Europe, as they then might move between countries, banks, and sometimes back to the States. Hence, these coins tend to be heavily bagmarked and even have some wear from being hand-counted at times.

Conversely, the coins in Central and South America tended to just sit -- often for decades -- without being disturbed. These coins tended to be much higher quality than their European cousins. The classics here are the MTB (1983) and Wells Fargo (1996) Hoards, each of which had numerous Gem Quality Saint-Gaudens coins. The former was from El Salvador and the latter we're not sure but the origin was South or Central America.

 

It’s interesting you mention that!

I was reading the biography of the famous female American journalist Nellie Bly and when she did her trip around the world she took with her £200 in British currency along with some American $20 Double Eagles because she was curious to see how American coinage was accepted in different places in the world.

Apparently she said that she only rarely saw American gold coinage and that when she did it was usually used as a form of jewelry rather than currency.

She also said American Double Eagles were only accepted at a massive 60% discount which absolutely blows my mind when we know the gold in them was just as good as any other nation’s gold coinage.

Luckily for Nellie she had British coinage & banknotes which were accepted at face value almost everywhere or at worst a tiny discount on it.

Note: At the time the British pound was worth $4-5 unlike today where it’s only worth like $1.20 or something like that so Nellie had with her the equivalent of about $900 in gold standard dollars.

 

Never heard of her...interesting....will check it out.

Probably a testamant to the beauty of our gold coins, including Lady Liberty and the Eagle on the Saints.

That gold was the Gold Standard (pardon the pun ) as gold content and quantity in many other coins was distrusted by locals. I find it hard to believe DEs were discounted 60% except where someone might have been in a backwater.

The British Empire had it's advantages, but that much of a premium over DE's shouldn't be the case.

 

Oh yeah she was referring to very isolated and rural areas where the DE sold at that 60% discount.

Like when she had to take elephants through India due to lack of roads.

I don’t think most of those people who lived in those areas had ever seen an American let alone a Double Eagle so they probably had no clue of what the true gold content was.

She even bought a monkey!!

Oh and the reason she became famous was she pretended to be insane to get a scoop on what went on in mental institutions and revealed all kinds of abuses and tortures and neglect.

People were outraged as they had expected mentally ill people to be getting treatment not punishment for their mental illnesses.

Idk if you’ve seen the TV show American Horror Story but the Asylum season main character Lana Winters is based on her .

 

Here is my first double eagle. A 1924 piece, I got it for $69 in 1971 at a Dayton coin show. Not the best pictures.

 

Wow nice! Congrats!

Unfortunately for me by the time I had my first job as an adult and was able to afford gold the price was already over $1,000 an oz.

I was just born too late to get any great deals on gold that used to exist

 

Seen a PCGS AU 58 1890 date at a coin show for $150 over spot. I thought that was a good deal. I think the 1890 is a better date with only 75,000 pcs. minted.

 

Not as familiar with Liberty Double Eagle pricing....so it normally trades at a ~8% premium, that particular date ?

Also....you paid $150 over spot gold for 0.9675 ounces, right ? About a 12% premium overall.

That's the thing with Double Eagles: you're getting about 3% less gold than 1 ounce so even if you paid NO PREMIUM to spot gold, you are paying a 3% premium.

Which....I am happy to pay, BTW.

 

I'm interested in a good source for St Gauden Double Eagles, hopefully MS63 or better. I've heard or read that gold has come down some. I'm not interested in ebay anymore as well as those Shopping Network have. I've been burnt too many times at ebay and the coins sold on TV are so overpriced, I quit looking at them. My favorite gold coin that I bought about 13 years ago is the 2009 (MMIX) Ultra High Relief Gold Coin. Recently, I bought the 2017 American Liberty High Relief $100 Gold Coin and its mate, the 1/10th Ounce match. I also got the 2021 American Liberty High Relief $100 Gold Coin. Most of my purchases are made because i enjoy looking at them. The 2021 is wild. I love the bucking bronco. I've been reading Louis L'Amour books since I was in college. Most of them I've read several times. I hate to send them off to have them graded because I don't want to see what the coins will be graded. My first gold coin came back "Details" and I've been afraid of sending them off ever since then.

 

If you’re just looking for St. Gaudens Double Eagles in a grade above MS63 and don’t care about the date or mintmark I recommend JM Bullion or APMEX.

Like something like this should be just fine: