The story of the California gold rush is well known. A few nuggets found in a mountain stream in Coloma 40 miles from Sutter’s Mill in 1848 triggered a global movement towards the Californian gold fields. In the single year of 1849, over two hundred thousand people arrived to look for gold and was a major event in the settlement of the American West.
The gold produced by California distorted the world market for the metal. The price of silver increased in relation to that of gold so that it became profitable to smelt silver coins for the value of their metal content. Silver coins were rapidly disappearing  so the minting of gold dollars was authorised in the Act  3^rd March 1849. The authorisation also permitted a larger coin to be minted, the gold twenty dollars or double eagle. The $20 double eagle was first designed by Mint Engraver James B. Longacre, his initial, L, appears at the cut of the bust.  The obverse featured Liberty facing left, wearing a small crown called a coronet, inscribed with the word LIBERTY and was surrounded by 13 stars. Longacre modeled Liberty from the ancient Roman sculpture, Crouching Venus.

The reverse was patterned after the Great Seal of the United States, which had been an inspiration for U.S. coinage as far back as 1797. The face value denomination was indicated as “TWENTY D”.

An analogous Liberty head, designed by Christian Gobrecht, had already started being used in 1838 when the ten dollar (eagle) coin was reintroduced; in 1839, she was represented on the five dollar coin and, in 1840, on the two and a half dollar coin..Numismatists have named the Longacre twenty dollar coin as the Coronet Double Eagle. It is often referred to as the Liberty Head type and it was minted from 1850

The $20 double eagle quickly became the preferred denomination for international transactions and bank deposit holdings. Thus, larger quantities of double eagle coins were minted than any other gold denomination.

Coronet Double Eagles are broken into three classifications. Class I was minted from 1850 through 1866. Class II originated in 1866 when the addition of the motto IN GOD WE TRUST was added above the eagle on the reverse. The motto was an appeal to the Almighty for national guidance and healing during the difficult Civil War era. In 1877, the reverse was modified by replacing the “D.” abbreviation with the full word “DOLLARS”, resulting in Class III double eagles. These were minted every year until 1907 when the Coronet twenty dollar coin series was replaced by the Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle.

More than 100 million Coronet Double Eagles were minted over a span of 58 years. Many dates are rather common today in lesser grades and experience price movements paralleling bullion market activity, and are popular for gold buyers seeking a hedge against inflation with some built-in collectible value.

The Liberty 20 dollars Specification.

Weight of gold = 33.44 x 900/1000 =30.1 grams of pure gold

Tags: DOLLAR, Gold, Gold coins, Money

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 11:20 am and is filed under Gold, Gold coins, Money, Numismatics, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.