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 1 items.
$20 Pattern Coin, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
- Description
- United States Mint, Philadelphia. Less than two dozen of these coins were struck. This kind of relief was never intended for a circulating coin, because it took nearly a dozen passes through the press to achieve. We should instead see these marvelous coins as testimony to the human spirit and to human curiosity: just how much relief could you obtain, and how long would it take to create it?
- This ultra high relief twenty has pedigree as well as beauty in its favor. Presdient Theodore Roosevelt gave it to his daughter as a Christmas present in 1907. Augustus Saint-Gaudens had presented it to the president, and it may have been the first piece struck. Roosevelt's daughter donated this coin to the Smithsonian in 1961.
- [reference no. Judd 1778]
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1907
- designer
- Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
- mint
- U.S. Mint, Philadelphia
- ID Number
- NU*236191.0001
- catalog number
- NU71628
- accession number
- 236191
- catalog number
- 236191.0002
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center