10 Dollars, United States, 1908
date: label: Date made
content: 1908
name: label: mint
content: U.S. Mint, Philadelphia
label: designer
content: Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: One (1) 10 dollar coin
label: Description (Brief)
content: United States, 1908
label: Description (Brief)
content: Obverse Image: Left-facing Liberty wearing a feather headdress, 13 stars along top edge of coin.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Obverse Text: LIBERTY / 1908
label: Description (Brief)
content: Reverse Image: Eagle with wings folded standing on top of a bundle of arrows and branch.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Reverse Text: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / E PLURIBUS UNUM / TEN DOLLARS
label: Description
content: In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt asked sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to lead an effort to redesign American coinage. Saint-Gaudens developed a concept that many consider the most beautiful American coin ever conceived.
label: Description
content: In addition to this $20 Dollar coin, Saint-Gaudens also redesigned the $10 coin, or eagle, but did not live to see this effort through to completion. With Saint-Gaudens's passing, the eagle project was entrusted to Chief Engraver Barber.
label: Description
content: There was little he could do to bowdlerize the artist's original: Saint-Gaudens had put most of his efforts for high relief coinage into the double eagle. His ten-dollar piece offered modest innovations in terms of its relief, but it didn't awake Barber's opposition to the extent that the double eagle design had. The redesigned eagle was struck through early 1933, essentially in the form in which Saint-Gaudens had created it.
label: Description
content: There was one innovation in mid-1908. Theodore Roosevelt frowned on the inclusion of the motto "In God We Trust," on American money. He said religion and commerce didn't mix. So neither the new double eagle nor the new eagle bore the traditional inscription for the first year or so. But Roosevelt would soon be on his way out of office and the motto was reinstituted on both coins. This coin is one of the earlier "godless" ones. When the motto returned, it appeared before the eagle's breast on the reverse.
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: Transfer: US Mint
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1985.0441.1286
label: catalog number
content: 1985.0441.1286
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: wt. 16.721 g