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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;johnmilton, post: 5176126, member: 101855&quot;]Supposedly the Grant administration got paper and gold at par at the end of his second term in 1877. He bragged about that in his best-selling autobiography. I’m not sure that it always stayed that way. There were contracts drawn which called for the payment in gold. That tells me that no everyone thought that paper and silver money were the same as gold, at least not all the time.</p><p><br /></p><p>One of things that drove Grover Cleveland crazy during of his second, non-consecutive term, during the Panic of 1893 was the dip the Federal Government’s gold reserve. The perception was if it fell below a certain level, that the stability of the currency would be at risk. Cleveland had to borrow gold from the likes of J. P. Morgan and other eastern bankers, which made him very unpopular in some circles.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1896 Cleveland stood for maintaining the gold standard. He was not a fan of his party’s (Democratic Party) nominee, William Jennings Bryan, who based his campaign on the free coinage of silver. </p><p><br /></p><p>So far $20 gold go, they were not something that people ran around with, like $20 bills today. They represented the better part of month’s earnings for many people. As some else said earlier, a lot of stores would have had trouble making change if one bought a small item and offered a double eagle as payment.</p><p><br /></p><p>The proof is in the condition of the $20 gold coins we see today. Most pieces are EF or better. That indicates that they didn’t circulate that much. They got bag marks from getting clanged around, but “honest wear” from circulation was unusual. I can’t recall seeing a $20 gold piece in Fine via “honest wear.” Twenty dollar gold coins were made to make large payments, not for everyday use.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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