20 Dollars, Pattern, United States, 1907
date: label: date made
content: 1907
name: label: mint
content: U.S. Mint, Philadelphia
label: designer
content: Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
notes: label: Description
content: 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.
label: Description
content: 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.
label: Description
content: 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.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place of issue
content: United States
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: National Numismatic Collection
label: See more items in
content: Coins
label: See more items in
content: Numismatics
label: See more items in
content: Coins, Currency and Medals
label: See more items in
content: Legendary Coins
publisher: label: Related Publication
content: Zoomable Image and Details
label: Related Publication
content: Glossary of Coins and Currency Terms
label: Related Web Publication
content: http://americanhistory.si.edu/coins/glossary.cfm
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Mint
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1985.0441.2100
label: catalog number
content: 1985.0441.2100
label: accession number
content: 1985.0441
objectType: label: Object Name
content: coin
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: gold (overall metal)
label: Physical Description
content: 0 (overall die axis)
label: Physical Description
content: 0 (overall die axis measurement)
label: Physical Description
content: struck (overall production method)
label: Measurements
content: overall: .4 cm x 2.7 cm; 5/32 in x 1 1/16 in