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Message:: [QUOTE="johnmilton, post: 4313988, member: 101855"]After August 1, 1834, the earlier $2.50 and $5.00 gold coins that U.S. mint had issued prior to that date were subjected to another round of melting. To put it simply, one could have gone to the U.S. mint with 15 of the old $5 gold pieces, deposited them to be re-coined and would have received 16 of the new $5 gold pieces in return. Obviously this was a huge incentive to turn in the “old-tenor” gold coins for melting and re-coinage which is one more reason why these coins are so rare today. For example the 1834 large size Capped Head $5 gold pieces that were issued during the first part of 1834 have a mintage of 50,141 pieces. Today there are probably no more than 50 to 60 of these coins known to collectors, and 1834 is the most common date in the series. Overall it has been estimated that only 239 coins have survived from the 668,200 coins that were reported to have been minted between 1829 and 1834. An 1834 "old tenor gold" $5 gold piece. This is the most common date, but it is still a very scarce coin. [ATTACH=full]1096936[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1096937[/ATTACH] Collectors call the smaller $2.50 and $5.00 gold coins that the mint issued starting in August 1834 the Classic Heads. These coins are fairly common, and they are often seen in large quantities at major coin conventions and in auctions. The Classic Head $2.50 and $5.00 are usually available in grades ranging from VF to AU. Strictly Mint State Classic Head gold coins are quite rare because once these pieces went into circulation, they stayed there. Very few of these coins were set aside by collectors and other individuals. Although Jackson’s monetary policies toward gold coinage proved to be successful, that did not stop his contemporary critics from lambasting him and his hand-picked successor, President Martin Van Buren. A number of Hard Times tokens carry phrases like “mint drop,” “metallic currency,” “Benton currency,” and “Benton experiment.” Most of these tokens are fairly common, but the prices for nicely preserved Hard Times tokens have been increasing in recent years. Still nice examples in Choice VF and EF can still be found for less than $100.  This Hard Times Token, Low 55, called the Classic Head gold coins "mint drops." It also satarized some the Jackson's supporters, the "loco focos" and senator Thomas Hart Benton. [ATTACH=full]1096942[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1096943[/ATTACH]  This Hard Times Tokens, Low 51, is quite common. It shows jackson emerging from a strong box, blaming him for the economic slow down. The reverse shows a donkey with an "LLD" on his belly. It is both a bad pun on Jackson's name and demeanor (stubborn jack ass) and the fact that Harvard awarded him an honorary Doctor of Law, much to the disapproval of some who had graduated from there. [ATTACH=full]1096945[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1096947[/ATTACH] Andrew Jackson’s gold coin reform proved to be a durable piece of legislation. The weight standards the $2.50 and $5.00 gold coins would remain the same until the last business strike examples of those two denominations were issued in 1929. The other U.S. gold denominations would be issued with weights that were proportional to the Jackson standards for their respective face values. In fact the modern commemorative five and ten dollar gold coins that the modern U.S. mint has issued up the present time are still tied to the metallic standards and weights that Andrew Jackson and Thomas Hart Benton proposed in 1834. I have many other political Hard Times Tokens. If you would like to look at more of them, we can continue with this. [/QUOTE]

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