The 2009 Ultra High Relief double Eagle shipped with a book that goes into fascinating detail about how the dies were prepared, and has a web site with the same kind of information. Both mention that the coin was not economically strikeable with the technology of the early twentieth century. Both are oddly short of information about what happens in the manufacturing process after the working dies were produced for the 2009 coin. So what was different about striking it that made it feasible in 2009? Is it just that the 2009 coin was 24K and therefore easier to squish in a press? Did die design actually have a bearing on it, given that they used finite element analysis to design out stress concentrations? Do modern presses apply more pressure?
The cost. The mint can only mint coins if they can make a profit selling them. Until '09, the cost of gold had not risen enough to make this possible because collectors will only pay a certain percentage premium over the value of the gold itself. And as cost rises that precentage drops. That's what made it economically feasible.
Beautiful coins that created instant profits. Ordered three (3 different accounts) in the first hour. I was lucky to get mine immediately, as the Mint had just given the delivery contract to a new company, that believed in filling orders in the LIFO method. That company didn't even require a delivery signature for a $1200 gold coin. Mint should've **** canned Pitney Bowes. The week I got them was the PCGS monthly open house, I live nearby and paid for the 4 hour walk thru special. All got 70 First strike. Each sold within 48 hours of receipt for three times original issue price.
The 1907 high relief was not economically feasible because it took multiple strikes to bring up the relief, possibly with re-annealing of the coin between strikes. This just is not practical for a coin being made for circulation. They need to be strikable with a single quick blow. The 2009 UHR being a collector coin could be struck more slowly on a higher pressure press and struck more than once if tha was needed. (I don't know how many strikes were used on the 2009 UHR.) If the 1907 High reliefs had been sold to collectors for $35 apiece rather than trying to make them as a circulation strike they would have been "successful" as well.
References differ on the exact number, but the 1907, depending on who you consult, may have required as many as 11 strikes per coin. I don't think it was anywhere near as bad for the 2009. EDIT: two strikes at 65 metric tons, http://usmint.gov/mint_programs/ultrahigh/index.cfm?action=case3. Doug, thank you, for some reason I hadn't thought about the economics. Yes, I can see how a premium of a few hundred dollars makes a lot of things "economical".
Yes, annealing and reinsertion into the press preserving the alignment: http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/a/uhr_saints.htm. "According to Walter Breen's Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins, it took nine striking blows of the coining press, at an immense hydraulic force of 172 tons of pressure, to bring up the detail on the original UHR Double Eagles". So the original was kind of the SR-71 of coinage: a brilliant example of how far you can push technological achievement and destroy economics.
