U.S. Gold Double Eagles

Double eagles were so named because the largest U.S. coin until the time of the California gold rush was a $10 face value (approximately ½ troy ounce) gold Eagle. When Congress in 1849 authorized the large $20 gold piece to efficiently coin the bonanza of gold coming from the California gold fields, it naturally came to be called the ‘double’ eagle.

Later gold discoveries in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and Alaska caused hundreds of millions of ounces of gold to be coined at the U.S. Mints into these large double eagles. Gold double eagles are the wealth born of the Old West gold mining days. For the world, the U.S. $20 gold double eagle symbolized the vast riches of the United States in the second half of the 1800s.

These coins have always represented a lot of money. In 1900, a double eagle $20 gold coin was more than the average week’s wages for most people.

To demonstrate the purchasing power of a double eagle, imagine a weekend in New York City in 1900. A night’s stay at the Plaza Hotel cost $1.50, a lunch of a beer and a sandwich was a nickel, theatre tickets on Broadway might cost you 35c, and a five-course dinner at the finest restaurant in the city, Delmonico’s, would set you back all of 75 cents. In other words, you would have a hard time spending the whole twenty dollars while splurging on a first-class weekend in New York!

We bring you affordable, lightly circulated gold money from the era when a dollar was a dollar. And because these are not flawless, museum-quality specimens, you can carefully handle and enjoy these gold treasures. Feel free to hold them in your hand – that’s the feel of real gold, a treasure you can hold and possess as have only a fortunate for thousands of years…

If you had a stack of these one hundred years ago, you had quite a treasure! And the same is true today. Although our population has increased, and our national wealth is higher, there still exists only a limited supply of these old $20 gold pieces – just as there is a limited supply of gold!