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Message:: [QUOTE="Conder101, post: 1027177, member: 66"]The practice of having the sme design on all the coins was not unique to this country.  In fact that was the standard practice in most countries and many still follow it.  Often there would be three designs, one for the base metals, one for the silver and one for the gold coins.  This was because often there would be a close overlap in sizes  and it prevented the plating of a low value coin to get it to pass as a higher value. (Back then the coins often did not have denominations on thm and people were expected to know the values based on the size and the metal.)    As for deciding to go with differnet designs in 1916 it was definitely not a matter of a cost svings.  It would have been much cheaper to have just had the coins designed in house and use one design for all the coins.  As it was they had to pay for three designs and then pay more to have them revise them.  In house they would not have had to pay the engraver any extra and they would have perfected the one design and then just used it on each coin.  It is possible that if the 1890 design contest had been successful we might have had individual design for the coins 25 years earlier, but Barber and Saint-Gaudens made sure that didn't happen.[/QUOTE]