How much was a gold $20 Double Eagle worth in the late 1800s?

I did look it up though.

What I looked up says that Nixon ended (“Nixon Shock”) the convertibility of US notes into gold & silver and the US dollar became a fiat currency based on free-float value.

Thats why I’m asking if you found something different I could see.

 

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Just because a law is still on the books doesn't mean it's still observed or enforced.

If someone did take gold to the Mint and insist on receiving coin for it, I'll bet they'd use the official US gold reserve price of $42.22/troy ounce.

 

Didn't I read somewhere that the $3 gold was tied up with the whole 3-cent stamp and trime debacle?

 

That would still work though!

As you said “insist on receiving coin for it.”

As long as it’s not $42.22 cash I don’t care what denominations the coins are since they’d still be worth melt.

 

$2.50 gold coins were more of an east coast coin. If you look at the Red Book listings, you will see that the Denver and San Francisco Mints issued quarter eagles on a sporadic basis. The Carson City Mint never made them.

 

Roger Burdette wrote that the claim $3 gold coins were made to buy 100 postage stamps was not true. He cited that they were produced to facilitate making change with in $1, $2.50 and $5 gold coin series.

As for the Three Cent Piece, that has some logic. When the postage was dropped to 3 cents in the 1850s, post offices would have needed large cents to make change. Large cents did not circulate all that well outside of the large cities. Therefore the Three Cent Piece made sense.

 

The statute does talk about "receipts" and "paying" for bullion, but nothing about issuing gold or silver coin in exchange for bullion.

Going further back, here's the Act that originally (I think) set terms for bringing in bullion for coinage, starting around the middle of page 249 (this document scan starts at page 246):

https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/2nd-congress/session-1/c2s1ch16.pdf

But we know that one hasn't been continuously in force, if only because FDR's 1933 executive order put a stop to issuing gold coins, period.

I think we all know that you can't walk into the Mint with a bag of gold dust and have them issue you eagles, half-eagles, quarter-eagles, and so forth containing equal gold weight. They don't mint the coins any more for circulation. I don't have the know-how to track through all the relevant laws between 1792 and today, but I would be interested to see what today's actual policy is. (How do you go about getting the Mint to refine your PMs into gold and silver bars, free of charge?)

Edit: being called away for the afternoon, so nobody feel rushed to find answers for me.

 

I think the government should take private silver, mint it into American Silver Eagles, charge a minting & processing fee and give it back to the customer in that form.

Perhaps there could be an added fee for the option to make it a proof.

I know the government already does buy silver but they should accept it from individuals too.

Any profit the Mint makes should go towards paying the national debt just like everything else the Mint sells.

 

Actually, common stocks are a MUCH BETTER inflation hedge.

 

Yup, something I learned from reading RWB's Saint-Gaudens book.

Only a few hundred Saint-Gaudens DE's were used in commerce domestically during the 1920's. It may have been a bit more closer to 1907 and maybe in the 1800's (because of the fear of paper money) maybe even more. But no more than a few hundred or so with a ceiling of probably 1,000 coins a year.

$20 was just too much and paper money gradually was accepted, especially after the creation of the Federal Reserve System.

The smaller ones much more active though than the larger ones.

 

Actually I thought it was free of charge minting your PM into coinage if you wanted to wait. However, the mint encouraged the option that you could exchange your bullion instantly for coins for a small fee. The mint did this because it gave them a little revenue, but I am pretty sure if you wished to wait for the mint to use yours, you would come back in a month or something and they would give you the coins they could produce from your bullion and pay you for whatever little amount was left over that was too small to coin.

I read this about the very earliest days of the mint. Later, when they reduced the pm in the coinage, I am sure they passed a law to let the government keep the seignorage.

 

And people were still using silver dollars in Nevada and Idaho in the early 1960's. Nevada, casinos; Idaho, still had operating silver mines.

 

The trade dollar had more silver content than a US dollar due to competing silver coinage used in Asian trade and was legal tender until early 1887.

 

I hadn't heard of a Humbert $50 gold piece before but that might explain why John Wayne was always puling out a "fifty dollar gold piece " from his vest pocket to cover some friend's debt. The only $50 gold I'd heard of was a private mint gold "slug".

 

They might be the same thing I’m not sure.

This is the Humbert $50 gold piece.

They were minted during the California Gold Rush to provide currency in the West by taking advantage of all the freshly mined gold being found.

2.5 troy oz of pure gold. Enough to make any gold bug drool. ^_^