page_title: Louisiana Purchase Exposition gold dollar
section_title: Preparation
hierarchical_section_title: Louisiana Purchase Exposition gold dollar / Preparation
caption_attribution_description: English: 1903 MS Louisiana Purchase Three-Piece Cardboard Die Trial Impressions (1114-2166)
context_page_description: The Louisiana Purchase Exposition gold dollar is a commemorative coin issue dated 1903. Struck in two varieties, the coins were designed by United States Bureau of the Mint Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber. The pieces were issued to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in 1904 in St. Louis; one variety depicted former president Thomas Jefferson, and the other, the recently assassinated president William McKinley. Although not the first American commemorative coins, they were the first in gold.
  Promoters of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, originally scheduled to open in 1903, sought a commemorative coin for fundraising purposes. Congress authorized an issue in 1902, and exposition authorities, including numismatic promoter Farran Zerbe, sought to have the coin issued with two designs, to aid sales. The price for each variety was $3, the same cost whether sold as a coin, or mounted in jewelry or on a spoon.
  The coins did not sell well, and most were later melted down. Zerbe, who had promised to support the issue price of the coins, did not do so as prices dropped once the fair closed.
context_section_description: The Louisiana Purchase Exposition dollar was authorized by Congress on June 28, 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt signed an appropriations bill that included a $5,000,000 rider to subsidize the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The bill in question authorized 250,000 gold one-dollar pieces to be paid over to the exposition organizers as part of the appropriation, upon their posting a bond that they would fulfill the requirements of the legislation.  The bill did not specify the wording or design to be placed on the coins, leaving that to the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury.
  Anthony Swiatek and Walter Breen, in their encyclopedia of commemorative coins, suggested that the decision to have multiple designs was "through some unrecorded agreement".  The legislation was ambiguous enough to permit such an interpretation, and numismatist Farran Zerbe urged the Mint to strike more than one type of coin, stating that sales would be increased if this was done. Zerbe was not only a collector (he would serve as president of the American Numismatic Association from 1908 to 1910), but he also promoted numismatics with his traveling exhibition, "Money of the World".  He was involved in the distribution of commemorative coins from the Columbian half dollar of 1892 to the Panama-Pacific issue of 1915, and would be the sole distributor of Louisiana Purchase dollars.
  On August 12, 1902, Treasury Secretary Leslie M. Shaw wrote to former Missouri governor David R. Francis, one of the promoters of the exposition, enquiring what design exposition officials would like to see on the reverse of the coins.  Although Francis's response is not extant, Mint authorities originally determined upon an olive branch surrounding a numeral "1".  This was apparently disliked by the Director of the Mint, George E. Roberts, for on October 2, 1902, Philadelphia Mint Superintendent John Landis wrote to him, enclosing cardboard impressions of the original and revised proposed reverses.  The new design had the value spelled out and the letter stated that the changes were being made at Roberts's suggestion.  On October 13, Barber went to Washington (where the director's office was located) to confer with Roberts about the design.  Roberts considered the olive branch "too conspicuous", given the size of the coin and the lettering, and asked that the branch be reduced in size.  This apparently was done. By September 1902, work upon the dies for the obverses, showing the heads of McKinley and Jefferson, being worked upon by Mint Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber, was well-advanced.
  In December 1902, the Philadelphia Mint struck 75,080 gold dollars.  These were dated 1903, a violation of normal Mint practice to have the date of striking on the coin.  This was not unprecedented; the 1900-dated Lafayette dollar had been struck in December 1899.  It is not known which gold dollar was first struck.  In January 1903, an additional 175,178 pieces were coined; the excess of 258 over the authorized mintage was set aside for testing by the annual Assay Commission. There is no difference between those pieces struck in 1902 and those minted in 1903. Fifty thousand pieces were sent to the St. Louis sub-treasury on December 22, 1902, to await the organizing committee's compliance with other parts of the law, most likely relating to the required posting of a bond.
  The first 100 specimens of each design were struck in a proof finish.  These were mounted on cardboard with presentation certificates and presented to favored insiders and Mint officials; they were not available to the public.  The certificates were signed by Superintendent Landis, and by Rhine R. Freed, Chief Coiner of the Philadelphia Mint. The coin was placed inside a holder with wax paper window, secured into place with heavy string with that mint's seal. These were the first commemorative gold coins struck by the United States.
caption: Die impressions in cardboard of pattern versions of the gold dollars.  The reverse shows the olive branch larger than on the issued coins.
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