SEPTEMBER 22
1795•Capped Bust Right Eagle ($10)
2026•Final Best of the Mint Set Announced
The First United States $10 Gold Eagles Are Delivered
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On September 22, 1795, the United States Mint made its first delivery of the new $10 gold eagle, the highest-value coin authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792. Historical Mint records state that the first delivery consisted of 1,097 eagles. Of those, 400 were immediately paid to the Bank of Pennsylvania against gold it had deposited for coinage.
That distinction matters. The CoinCrafters master calendar originally described the first delivery as 400 pieces, but contemporary Mint-history records and modern numismatic research show that 400 was the Bank of Pennsylvania portion of a larger 1,097-coin delivery. The corrected figure makes September 22 no less important: this was the day America’s original flagship gold denomination entered the federal coinage system.
The 1795 eagle was large, heavy, and unmistakably valuable. Designed by Chief Engraver Robert Scot, it carried a youthful Liberty on the obverse and a small eagle on the reverse. At ten dollars face value, it represented the “eagle” unit from which the half eagle, quarter eagle, and eventually double eagle took their names.
The Eagle Was Built Into America’s First Coinage System
The $10 eagle began not at the Mint but in federal law.
The Coinage Act of April 2, 1792 created the United States Mint and established a decimal monetary system based on the dollar. For gold, Congress authorized three denominations: the $10 eagle, $5 half eagle, and $2.50 quarter eagle.
The eagle was the principal gold unit.
Congress specified its weight and fineness and gave the new nation a high-value domestic gold coin suitable for substantial transactions.
Yet authorization did not mean immediate production.
Why America Waited More Than Three Years
The first federal Mint was a new industrial operation attempting tasks the United States government had never before performed on a national scale.
Buildings had to be constructed. Furnaces, rolling mills, presses, and other machinery had to be installed. Skilled employees had to be hired. Dies had to be prepared.
Precious-metal coinage also faced an additional obstacle: the Coinage Act required the Mint’s assayer and chief coiner to post very large financial bonds before they could handle gold and silver.
Those bond requirements proved difficult to satisfy.
Congress eventually reduced them, clearing one of the barriers to regular precious-metal production.
The Mint’s first recorded deposit of gold bullion for coinage came on February 12, 1795.
It was made by Boston merchant Moses Brown and consisted of gold ingots valued at $2,276.22.
The Mint was not yet ready to return the deposit in newly struck federal gold coins, so Brown was paid in silver.
Other gold deposits followed.
By the summer of 1795, the Mint was finally prepared to begin regular gold coinage.
The first denomination produced was not the eagle.
On July 31, 1795, the Mint made its first delivery of $5 half eagles: 744 pieces.
Additional half-eagle deliveries followed through the summer.
The half eagle would prove more practical in domestic and international commerce than the larger $10 piece, and for long periods it became the workhorse denomination of American gold coinage.
But the eagle remained symbolically important as the highest denomination authorized in the original 1792 system.
Historical Mint accounts identify September 22 as the first delivery of eagles.
The delivery totaled 1,097 coins.
At ten dollars each, that represented $10,970 in newly minted American gold.
Four hundred pieces—$4,000 face value—were paid to the Bank of Pennsylvania, which had gold bullion on deposit at the Mint.
The remaining coins were part of the broader first delivery rather than a separate later issue.
This is the key correction to the older 400-piece figure sometimes repeated in summaries of the event.
Why the Number 400 Became Confusing
Early Mint coinage operated largely through bullion deposits.
A depositor brought precious metal to the Mint. The metal was refined, processed, and converted into federal coin, and coins were then returned or credited according to the applicable system.
Because the Bank of Pennsylvania received 400 eagles from the first delivery, that number became closely associated with the denomination’s debut.
But it does not represent the full September 22 delivery.
Modern auction research, historical Mint references, and nineteenth-century descriptions of the Mint consistently distinguish the 1,097-piece delivery from the 400-piece payment to the bank.
The name “eagle” was more than decoration.
In the original federal system, the eagle represented ten dollars.
A half eagle was therefore five dollars, and a quarter eagle was two dollars and fifty cents.
The denomination itself did not carry a large numeral “10” on its faces. People were expected to recognize the coin by its size, weight, design, and gold content.
That seems unusual today, but intrinsic precious-metal value played a far greater role in eighteenth-century money.
Chief Engraver Robert Scot designed the first eagle.
The obverse depicts Liberty facing right with flowing hair and a cap. LIBERTY appears above her head, with the date 1795 below.
Fifteen stars surround the portrait—ten to the left and five to the right—representing the fifteen states then in the Union.
The portrait belongs to the family of designs collectors commonly call Capped Bust Right or Turban Head gold coinage.
Its appearance is unmistakably early federal: classical Liberty, hand-prepared dies, prominent stars, and a visual style far removed from the mechanically uniform coinage of later centuries.
The Small Eagle Reverse
The reverse depicts an eagle with spread wings standing on a palm branch and holding a wreath in its beak.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA surrounds the design.
There is no denomination inscription.
This reverse is known to collectors as the Small Eagle type.
It was used on early gold denominations before the Mint adopted the more elaborate Heraldic Eagle reverse based on the Great Seal of the United States.
The 1795 eagle weighed approximately 17.5 grams and measured about 33 millimeters in diameter.
Its composition was roughly 91.67 percent gold, with the remainder alloying metal.
Its actual gold content was a little over half a troy ounce.
For an American in 1795, ten dollars represented significant purchasing power.
The eagle was not a coin for buying bread or paying a small tavern bill. It was suited to large transactions, banking, bullion settlement, and international commerce.
The Bank of Pennsylvania was one of the important financial institutions of the early republic.
Its receipt of 400 eagles from the first delivery illustrates the close connection between the early Mint and private or institutional bullion depositors.
The Mint did not simply manufacture a predetermined quantity of gold coins and send them into circulation.
Gold production depended heavily on metal arriving from depositors.
That made early mintages irregular and helps explain why one denomination might be produced heavily while another sat idle.
More Deliveries Followed
The September 22 delivery was only the beginning.
Additional eagle deliveries followed during the remainder of the year.
Mint records list 2,795 eagles delivered during calendar year 1795.
However, the familiar published mintage for 1795-dated eagles is 5,583.
That apparent contradiction reflects another feature of early Mint accounting: dies bearing an old date could continue to be used in a later calendar year.
Researchers believe substantial numbers of 1795-dated eagles were struck in early 1796.
Modern collectors naturally assume a coin dated 1795 was struck in 1795.
At the early Mint, that assumption is unsafe.
Dies were expensive and laborious to manufacture. If a usable die remained on hand when the calendar changed, Mint employees did not necessarily discard it simply because its date was now technically old.
As a result, delivery records and coin dates do not always line up neatly.
Specialist John Dannreuther has estimated that the true number of 1795-dated eagles may have been substantially higher than the traditional 5,583 figure, perhaps between 5,859 and 10,915 pieces.
The exact total remains a subject of numismatic research.
Collectors divide 1795 eagles into two famous major reverse varieties.
The more common form has thirteen leaves on the palm branch beneath the eagle.
The much rarer variety has nine leaves.
Five die marriages are known for 1795-dated eagles, with four using the 13 Leaves reverse and one using the 9 Leaves reverse.
The first die marriage, known as BD-1 in the Bass-Dannreuther system, is a 13 Leaves variety and is regarded as the first eagle variety struck.
Modern die-state research allows specialists to reconstruct the approximate order in which early coins were struck.
The BD-1 pairing is accepted as the inaugural eagle die marriage.
That means coins from the September 22 first delivery almost certainly included BD-1 examples.
For a collector, a BD-1 1795 eagle is therefore more than merely a first-year coin. It represents the earliest die pairing of America’s original ten-dollar gold denomination.
Adam Eckfeldt and the Mint Cabinet
One fascinating tradition surrounding the first eagles involves Adam Eckfeldt, an early Mint employee who later became chief coiner.
Eckfeldt was known for preserving interesting early coins and restrikes that helped form the nucleus of the Mint Cabinet.
Numismatic accounts state that an example from the first eagle coinage was preserved for the Mint collection.
The Mint Cabinet, formally organized in 1838, ultimately became a major foundation of the National Numismatic Collection now held by the Smithsonian Institution.
Thus at least one thread from the first eagle production leads directly into the nation’s institutional preservation of its own coinage history.
Gold was international money.
Merchants and bankers compared coins not simply by the number stamped on them but by their weight and fineness.
American gold coins therefore competed in a world filled with British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and other precious-metal issues.
The $10 eagle was impressive, but it was not necessarily the most convenient American gold coin abroad.
The $5 half eagle was closer in value to several widely used foreign gold pieces and often proved more useful in international trade.
This contributed to the half eagle’s stronger early demand.
The Coinage Act of 1792 established a legal relationship between gold and silver.
Market prices did not remain fixed to Congress’s ratio.
When gold became worth more in the marketplace than the statutory relationship implied, American gold coins became profitable to export or melt.
That problem would plague early U.S. gold coinage for decades.
Many eagles left the country and disappeared into melting pots.
The surviving population of 1795 eagles is therefore only a fraction of the number originally struck.
Eagle Production Eventually Stops
The imbalance became serious enough that production of the $10 eagle ceased after 1804.
The denomination would not return until 1838, after Congress changed the nation’s gold coinage standards.
That long interruption divides the eagle series into dramatically different eras.
The first era—from 1795 through 1804—is among the most historically important and valuable areas of United States gold coinage.
The word “eagle” became permanently embedded in American numismatics.
Congress later authorized the $20 double eagle during the California Gold Rush era.
The quarter eagle and half eagle continued through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Circulating gold coinage ended during the Great Depression, but the name returned prominently in 1986 with the American Eagle bullion coin program.
Modern American Gold Eagles are not direct continuations of the old circulating $10 denomination, but their name deliberately invokes that history.
September 22, 1795 marks the first recorded delivery of United States $10 gold eagles.
The full delivery was 1,097 pieces—not 400. The 400 figure refers to the portion paid to the Bank of Pennsylvania from that first delivery.
That correction sharpens rather than diminishes the story.
On that day, the highest denomination created by the Coinage Act of 1792 became a physical American coin.
Robert Scot’s Liberty and small eagle appeared on a substantial gold piece representing the principal unit of the federal gold system.
The denomination would become a pillar of nineteenth-century American gold coinage, disappear for more than three decades, return in new forms, and lend its name to some of the most famous coins the United States has ever produced.
But it began with the first 1,097 coins delivered in Philadelphia on September 22, 1795.
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