DECEMBER 13
1907•Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle Becomes Practical Coinage
1978•Susan B. Anthony Dollar
The Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle Finally Becomes a Practical American Coin
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On December 13, 1907, the United States Mint released the first low-relief Saint-Gaudens $20 double eagles to the general public. After months of artistic ambition, technical frustration, experimental strikes, extraordinary high-relief coins, and conflict inside the Mint, the design President Theodore Roosevelt had championed finally became practical money.
The new circulation version retained the essential imagery created by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Liberty advancing with torch and olive branch on the obverse and a magnificent eagle flying above the rising sun on the reverse. But the relief had been drastically reduced, the Roman-numeral date MCMVII was replaced by the ordinary Arabic “1907,” and the design could finally be struck efficiently for mass production.
By the end of 1907, the Philadelphia Mint had produced 361,667 of these low-relief double eagles. Their December 13 release marked the moment the Saint-Gaudens double eagle stopped being primarily an artistic experiment and became one of the great working gold coins of the United States.
Theodore Roosevelt Wanted Better American Coins
The story began with President Theodore Roosevelt's dissatisfaction with the nation's coinage.
Roosevelt believed American coins lacked the artistic power of ancient Greek pieces and wanted the United States to create money worthy of a major nation.
He found the ideal collaborator in Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of the most celebrated sculptors in America.
Their partnership produced one of the most ambitious episodes in U.S. Mint history.
Saint-Gaudens was already famous for monumental sculpture and portrait reliefs.
His works included major Civil War memorials and public monuments.
He understood how to give human figures depth, motion, dignity, and symbolic force.
Roosevelt wanted that sculptural quality transferred to American money.
Roosevelt and Saint-Gaudens corresponded enthusiastically about redesigning the nation's coins.
The president's willingness to bypass conventional Mint aesthetics created tension with Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber.
Barber had spent decades designing coins that could be manufactured efficiently on existing equipment.
Saint-Gaudens approached the problem as a sculptor first.
That difference would define the entire 1907 double-eagle saga.
The Double Eagle
The $20 gold piece was America's highest-denomination regular circulating coin.
The denomination had been authorized during the California Gold Rush and first issued for circulation in 1850.
James B. Longacre's Liberty Head design remained in use for more than half a century.
By Roosevelt's presidency, it represented exactly the sort of nineteenth-century coinage he wanted replaced.
For the new double eagle, Saint-Gaudens created an unusually dynamic Liberty.
She strides forward from the face of the coin.
In her right hand she raises a torch, symbolizing enlightenment.
In her left she carries an olive branch, symbolizing peace.
The U.S. Capitol appears in the background while rays of a rising sun spread behind her.
The reverse abandons the traditional heraldic eagle pose.
Instead, an eagle flies across the coin above the rays of a rising sun.
The image conveys movement, space, and national optimism.
It is one of the most immediately recognizable eagle designs ever placed on American coinage.
Saint-Gaudens and Roosevelt wanted the coin struck in extraordinarily high relief.
That approach could produce a medal-like object of exceptional sculptural depth.
But a circulating coin had to meet very different requirements from a medal.
It had to be produced rapidly, consistently, in huge numbers, and with machinery designed for commercial coinage.
The earliest Ultra High Relief pieces required repeated blows from the coinage press to bring up the design fully.
That was unacceptable for mass production.
A Mint producing hundreds of thousands or millions of coins could not devote extraordinary press time to each individual double eagle.
The artistic ideal and industrial reality were colliding.
Experimental Ultra High Relief pieces appeared early in 1907.
These spectacular coins represent the closest realization of Saint-Gaudens' sculptural concept.
They are among the most famous experimental U.S. gold coins.
But they were not the practical circulation version whose public release defines December 13.
A Crucial Date Distinction
The year 1907 produced several distinct Saint-Gaudens double-eagle forms.
That makes precise chronology essential.
February experimental strikes, later High Relief production, and December low-relief circulation coins are related but separate events.
December 13 belongs specifically to the practical low-relief, Arabic-numeral version released to the general public.
A reduced—but still dramatic—High Relief version followed the Ultra High Relief experiments.
These coins retained the Roman numeral date MCMVII.
Approximately 12,000 were produced.
They were beautiful, but still required more than the ordinary single strike expected for efficient commercial production.
The Mint needed another reduction in relief.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was gravely ill during the coinage project.
He died on August 3, 1907.
The final practical version of his double eagle therefore emerged after his death.
His assistants, Mint engravers, and officials had to convert his artistic concept into a coin the Mint could actually produce in quantity.
Saint-Gaudens' assistant Henry Hering played an important role in translating and reducing the sculptor's models.
The project involved a difficult chain from large sculptural models to coin-sized hubs and dies.
Every reduction risked changing the character of the original artwork.
The final circulation coin inevitably reflected compromises made during that process.
Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber ultimately had to make the design workable for mass production.
Barber is sometimes cast simply as the villain of the Saint-Gaudens story because his reductions flattened the sculptural relief Roosevelt prized.
But the Mint faced a real manufacturing problem.
A circulating double eagle had to be struck reliably and rapidly.
One of the most visible changes was the date.
The High Relief coins used MCMVII, the Roman numeral representation of 1907.
The final low-relief version used ordinary Arabic numerals: 1907.
Collectors therefore commonly distinguish the late-1907 mass-production issue as the “Arabic Numerals” type.
The design's relief was lowered substantially.
That allowed the metal to flow into the dies with a single normal strike.
The result lacked some of the extraordinary sculptural depth of the earlier versions.
But it could finally function as everyday coinage.
December 1907 Production
The United States Mint identifies the Arabic-numeral low-relief version as the fourth major 1907 variation and confirms that it entered production in December.
Philadelphia was the only Mint positioned to produce the revised coin so late in the year.
By December 31, 361,667 pieces had been struck.
Specialist numismatic records preserved by PCGS and Stack's Bowers identify December 13, 1907 as the date the first low-relief Saint-Gaudens double eagles were released to the general public.
That makes December 13 a genuine circulation milestone rather than merely a design approval or internal Mint event.
Americans could finally obtain the practical version of Roosevelt and Saint-Gaudens' new $20 gold piece.
Coin collector and future congressman William A. Ashbrook recorded in his diary on December 13 that the new Saint-Gaudens double eagles were “just out” and that he acquired ten that day.
His entry is valuable because it captures the excitement from the perspective of a collector living through the event.
New U.S. coin designs could create immediate premiums and attention even in 1907.
Historical interpretation requires care.
Researchers have debated whether Ashbrook's ten coins were High Relief pieces rather than the newly released low-relief issue.
His diary confirms that Saint-Gaudens double eagles were attracting collector attention on December 13, but it should not be used alone to identify the exact variety he received.
The low-relief public-release date is independently documented in specialist records.
The 1907 Saint-Gaudens double eagle did not carry the motto “IN GOD WE TRUST.”
Roosevelt opposed placing the name of God on coins because he believed money could be used in circumstances that made the inscription irreverent.
The omission became controversial.
Congress eventually required restoration of the motto.
Beginning in 1908, “IN GOD WE TRUST” was added to the reverse above the rising sun.
Collectors therefore divide early Saint-Gaudens double eagles into No Motto and With Motto types.
The 1907 low-relief issue belongs to the No Motto group.
The change provides another example of how politics and public opinion can alter coin design.
Twenty Dollars Was Serious Money
A double eagle was not a casual pocket coin for most Americans.
Twenty dollars represented substantial purchasing power in 1907.
Large gold coins were important for banking, reserves, major transactions, and international payments.
Many Saint-Gaudens double eagles spent more time in vaults and bags than passing hand to hand in ordinary retail commerce.
Large quantities of U.S. gold coins eventually traveled abroad.
European banks and governments held American double eagles as reserves and settlement money.
This international movement later proved crucial to survival.
Coins stored outside the United States could escape domestic melting programs that destroyed enormous quantities of American gold coinage.
The Saint-Gaudens series was devastated by changes in American gold policy during the Great Depression.
Gold coin circulation effectively ended.
Huge quantities of double eagles held by the government were melted into bullion bars.
Many dates that had been struck in impressive numbers became far scarcer than their original mintages suggest.
Decades later, dealers discovered substantial quantities of U.S. double eagles in European and other foreign bank holdings.
These repatriated coins transformed the market.
Dates once thought scarce became more available, while truly rare issues could be distinguished more accurately.
The international role of the $20 gold piece therefore shaped modern collecting as much as its original Mint production did.
The 361,667-piece 1907 low-relief mintage is not the rarest Saint-Gaudens issue.
Examples survive in Mint State.
But very high-grade pieces become progressively more difficult.
Many coins were handled in bags, moved through banking channels, exported, or subjected to decades of storage before collectors began preserving them carefully.
Double eagles are large, heavy coins.
When hundreds or thousands were stored together in canvas bags, contact between the coins could leave marks.
A coin might technically never have circulated yet still acquire numerous abrasions.
That is why exceptionally clean Saint-Gaudens double eagles command significant premiums over ordinary Mint State examples.
The Design Outlives the Denomination
The Saint-Gaudens double eagle continued in various forms through the early 1930s.
The final famous chapter came with the 1933 double eagle, a coin struck but not released for normal circulation after the United States abandoned routine gold-coin payments.
The design then disappeared from active U.S. coin production for more than half a century.
When the United States introduced the American Gold Eagle bullion coin in 1986, the Mint revived Saint-Gaudens' Liberty for the obverse.
The adaptation gave his artwork a second life.
Millions of modern bullion and collector coins have since carried a version of the image.
Roosevelt's artistic experiment became one of the enduring faces of American precious-metal coinage.
A century after the original struggle, modern Mint technology allowed officials to revisit Saint-Gaudens' high-relief vision.
The 2009 Ultra High Relief Double Eagle used digital mapping of original Saint-Gaudens plasters and modern production techniques.
The coin demonstrated how far minting technology had advanced since 1907.
What had been impractical for mass production in Roosevelt's era could finally be realized with extraordinary fidelity.
The 1907 double eagle is one of the clearest case studies in the tension between artistic ambition and industrial production.
The Ultra High Relief coin may represent the purest artistic vision.
The December low-relief version represents engineering compromise.
Yet calling it merely a compromise understates its achievement.
It preserved enough of Saint-Gaudens' design to become one of America's most beloved coins while functioning within the Mint's production system.
Charles Barber's role deserves nuance.
Collectors often prefer Saint-Gaudens' dramatic high-relief versions and criticize Barber's flattened production design.
But Barber was responsible for making a difficult sculpture behave like a coin.
Without that practical intervention, the design might have remained a beautiful experiment rather than a long-running circulating series.
The final coin was not exactly what Roosevelt imagined.
But his larger goal succeeded.
The old Liberty Head double eagle disappeared.
A radically more modern and sculptural design replaced it.
American coinage had been forced into a new artistic era.
The influence extended far beyond the $20 denomination.
One Year, Four Major Versions
The Mint today recognizes four major variations of the 1907 double eagle.
The sequence moved through Ultra High Relief experiments, High Relief production, and finally the still-lower-relief Arabic-numeral coin.
Few years in American numismatics show design evolution so visibly within a single denomination.
A collector can literally line up the coins and watch artistic ambition being adapted to industrial reality.
Experimental strikes are fascinating, but circulation changes monetary history.
December 13 marks the moment the practical Saint-Gaudens design reached the public.
The coin could now leave the Mint in commercial quantities.
It was no longer primarily an object for presidents, officials, specialists, and privileged recipients.
It had become the nation's standard double eagle.
The public release also closed one of the longest chapters in U.S. gold coinage.
The Liberty Head double eagle had represented the denomination since 1850.
Its replacement symbolized a generational break.
The visual language of the Civil War-era Mint gave way to the sculptural confidence of the Progressive Era.
On December 13, 1907, the first practical low-relief Saint-Gaudens double eagles were released to the general public.
The event ended a remarkable year of experimentation.
Saint-Gaudens' original Ultra High Relief concept had proven too difficult for mass production. The later High Relief MCMVII coins remained beautiful but inefficient. Chief Engraver Charles Barber and others then reduced the design further, changed the date to Arabic numerals, and produced a version capable of being struck normally.
By year's end, Philadelphia had made 361,667.
The coin released on December 13 was not the purest realization of Saint-Gaudens' sculpture. It was something historically more consequential: the version that worked.
It entered commerce, became the standard American $20 gold coin, survived in vaults around the world, endured the destruction of the gold recall, and eventually supplied the imagery for the modern American Gold Eagle.
The path from Roosevelt's dream to practical money had been difficult. On December 13, 1907, that journey finally reached the American public.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1978 — Susan B. Anthony Dollar — First production strike; Mint Director Stella Hackel participated