Coins, Currency, and Medals - Overview
The Museum possesses one of the largest numismatic collections in the world. The collections include over 1 million objects, comprising coins, medals, decorations, and pieces of paper money. Among the many great rarities here are some of the world’s oldest coins, created 2,700 years ago. But the collection also includes the latest innovations in electronic monetary exchange, as well as beads, wampum, and other commodities once used as money. A special strength lies in artifacts that illustrate the development of money and medals in the United States. The American section includes many rare and significant coins, such as two of three known examples of the world's most valuable coin, the 1933 double eagle $20 gold piece.
"Coins, Currency, and Medals - Overview" showing 7 items.
Experimental 20 Dollars (1907)
- Description
- Someone once observed that a giraffe was a horse designed by a committee. The same might be said of this coin: what had seemed a good idea around a table in the boardroom proved to be an interesting but spectacular flop as it neared production.
- The coin resulted from a project that President Theodore Roosevelt began in 1905 to redesign American coinage. He commissioned sculptor August Saint-Gaudens to create the new designs, and Saint-Gaudens developed a plan for an ultra-high relief $20 coin. The coin here, which appears to have been struck early in 1907, followed Saint-Gaudens' basic designs, but there the similarities ended.
- This experimental coin contained twenty dollars' worth of gold, but it was squeezed into a coin the width of a ten-dollar piece. The discrepancy was handled by making the patterns much thicker than ordinary coins. Staff at the Mint wondered whether it was possible to decrease the diameter to have the best of both worlds: a coin in glorious high relief that didn't take quite as many blows of the press to create. The experiment failed. Although the patterns were unacceptable for commerce, word of their existence leaked out to the collecting community. An exasperated Mint Director wanted them called in and melted down. Somehow two escaped. Both are in the Smithsonian Collection.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1907
- maker
- Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
- U.S. Mint
- ID Number
- 1985.0441.2099
- accession number
- 1985.0441
- catalog number
- 1985.0441.2099
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
United States, 50 Dollars, 1877 (pattern)
- Description
- Patterns and experimental pieces form one of the most interesting groups of specimens associated with official coinage. It was customary for the Mint to provide samples of a proposed coin. More patterns were made in 1877 than in any other year. The Gold Rush in California prompted the merchants and bankers in San Francisco to lobby Congress for gold pieces of high denomination for quick counting purposes when a branch mint was established in their city in 1854. The design for the proposed large coin was similar to the $20 double eagle. Senator William Gwin of California introduced a bill for the adoption of this coin. His bill passed the Senate but failed to win approval in the House of Representatives. Although the coin was not approved, the proposal for such a large coin was feasible only after enough of the precious metal was available with the discovery of vast quantities in California. The depiction of Liberty on the obverse was a familiar symbol of national identity by 1877 for Americans.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1877
- maker
- U.S. Mint
- ID Number
- 1986.0836.0060
- accession number
- 1986.0836
- catalog number
- 1986.0836.0060
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
United States, Copper Cent, Pattern, 1792
- Description
- United States Mint, Philadelphia. Obverse: Head of Liberty with flowing hair facing right, date below. Reverse: Denomination in wreath, fraction (1/100) below. This design has been traditionally ascribed to a British artist named William Russell Birch. Patterns with these designs were struck towards the end of 1792. By the time the cent entered formal production, however, its weight and size had been reduced, and another artist was brought in to design the coin.
- [reference no. Judd 4]
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1792
- maker
- U.S. Mint
- ID Number
- 1993.0532.0001
- accession number
- 1993.0532
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
United States, Four Dollars, Pattern, 1879
- Description
- United States Mint, Philadelphia. Obverse: Liberty head with coiled hair, facing left; fineness around, date below. Reverse: Large star, denomination below. The four-dollar gold piece, or Stella, was the brainchild of the United States minister to Austria-Hungary, John A. Kasson. Kasson wanted an American gold coin that would trade on a par with a number of European counterparts, and the Stella seemed to be the answer.
- Patterns were struck in a variety of metals, with two depictions of Liberty. George T. Morgan was responsible for this version, a goddess with coiled hair. Charles E. Barber contributed the second idea, a Liberty with flowing hair.
- At the time, aluminum was popular as a pattern coinage metal. It was scarce, and it took a lovely impression from the dies. Experts call this piece a high Rarity-7, suggesting that four to six pieces exist.
- [reference no. Judd 1640]
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- maker
- U.S. Mint
- ID Number
- 1993.0532.0003
- accession number
- 1993.0532
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
United States, One Dollar, Lafayette commemorative, 1900
- Description
- United States Mint, Philadelphia. Obverse: Heads of Washington and Lafayette. Reverse: Equestrian statue of Lafayette. This coin was struck in connection with the Paris Exposition of 1900—pecifically, to defray part of the cost of creating a statue of Lafayette on horseback to be shown at the fair. Fifty thousand pieces were struck in mid–December of 1899. One proof has been reported as well. This coin is not a proof, but a regular business strike in extraordinary condition.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1900
- maker
- U.S. Mint
- obverse designer
- Barber, C E
- reverse designer
- Barber, C E
- ID Number
- 1994.0288.0002
- catalog number
- 1994.0288.0002
- accession number
- 1994.0288
- catalog number
- 94.288.02
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
United States, Twenty Dollars, Pattern, 1879
- Description
- United States Mint, Philadelphia. Obverse: Liberty head left, date below, weight and fineness around. Reverse: Eagle as on normal twenty-dollar coin, but Latin motto DEO EST GLORIA in place of IN GOD WE TRUST. This pattern came from the same impetus that led to the creation of the four-dollar gold coin, or Stella. The aim was to give American coinage a greater competitiveness and convertibility in international markets. Nine of these pieces are accounted for in gold including this one. [reference no. Judd 1643]
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- maker
- U.S. Mint
- ID Number
- 1994.0371.0002
- accession number
- 1994.0371
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
United States, 50 Dollars, 1877 (pattern)
- Description
- Some twenty years after the private sector had abandoned the idea of a fifty-dollar gold piece in the mid-1850s, the Philadelphia Mint considered the possibility of a federal coin of this denomination. There was even talk of a "union," or hundred-dollar coin, and a drawing or two has survived to suggest what the Mint had in mind. But in the end, no such coin was ever produced.
- The project went a bit farther in the case of the "half-union." Dies were prepared, the work of William Barber (father of the eventual Mint Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber).
- Barber's obverse and reverse designs look vaguely akin to Longacre's work for the double eagle. A few patterns were struck in copper and two in gold; the latter share a reverse die but each has a slightly different obverse die. The project was abandoned soon afterwards, as it became apparent that the new coin simply wasn't needed.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1877
- maker
- U.S. Mint
- ID Number
- 1986.0836.0059
- accession number
- 1986.0836
- catalog number
- 1986.0836.0059
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center