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 4 items.
United States, Five Dollars, 1860 (Colorado-Clark, Gruber & Co)
- Description
- Produced by the Clark, Gruber & Company's mint, Denver, Colorado. Obverse: Head of Liberty facing left, date below, as on regular federal issues. Reverse: Eagle, denomination below. For its half eagles, Clark, Gruber & Co. abandoned the Pikes Peak motif that it used on its larger coins. The company brought the designs for the five dollar pieces into conscious imitation of regular United States coins.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1860
- mint
- Clark, Gruber & Co.
- ID Number
- 1985.0441.2228
- catalog number
- 1985.0441.2228
- accession number
- 1985.0441
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
United States, Twenty Dollars, 1927 D
- Description
- United States Mint, Denver. Obverse: Liberty striding towards the viewer, bearing olive branch and torch. Reverse: Eagle in flight above the sun. Of the approximately ten known survivors, this is one of three in the National numismatic Collection.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1927
- mint
- U.S. Mint, Denver
- ID Number
- NU*283645.0999
- accession number
- 283645
- catalog number
- 68.159.0391
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
United States, 20 Dollars, 1926-D
- Description
- United States Mint, Denver. Obverse: Liberty striding towards the viewer, bearing olive branch and torch. Reverse: Eagle in flight above the sun. This is one of a fairly small number of survivors of these coins. It is in exceptional condition.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1926
- mint
- U.S. Mint, Denver
- maker
- Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
- ID Number
- 1985.0441.1505
- catalog number
- 1985.0441.1505
- accession number
- 1985.0441
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Clark, Gruber & Co., 20 Dollars, 1860
- Description
- A decade or so after the California Gold Rush began in the late 1840s, gold was discovered on the South Platte River, near the future city of Denver. As with the earlier strike, this one occasioned disputes over the value and purity of gold dust, as well as great difficulties in getting the precious metal all the way to Philadelphia to be coined there, and shipped back again.
- Matters would be greatly simplified if a coiner, either private or public, could set up shop near the gold fields. A good candidate existed-Clark, Gruber & Co. Up to now, the firm had acted as brokers, bankers, and assayers. But if a coinage was wanted, Austin and Milton Clark and Emmanuel Gruber were up to the challenge and had the resources to do it right.
- Milton Clark went back East to get the necessary machinery, three lots were purchased in Denver, and a two-story brick building soon went up on the property. Trial strikes of the four denominations to be coined ($2.50, $5, $10, and $20) were ready for inspection by mid-July 1860, and formal coinage began about a week after that.
- One of the firm's most famous products showed a marvelous, if unrealistic, image of Pikes Peak, beneath which Denver-and the Clark, Gruber enterprise-sat. The facility remained in operation through 1862, although all of its coins were dated 1860 and 1861. It was elbowed out of the coining business in April 1863. It turned first into a federal assay office, then 43 years later, into another branch of the United States Mint.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1860
- mint
- Clark, Gruber & Co.
- ID Number
- 1985.0441.2226
- catalog number
- 1985.0441.2226
- accession number
- 1985.0441
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center