Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle Values: The 1907-1933 $20 Gold Piece

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The Saint-Gaudens double eagle at a glance

The Saint-Gaudens double eagle is the twenty-dollar gold coin the United States Mint struck from 1907 through 1933. Its obverse shows Liberty striding forward with a torch and olive branch. Its reverse shows a flying eagle above the sun. Many collectors and coin writers consider it the most beautiful United States coin ever produced.

The coin weighs 33.436 grams, of which 90 percent is gold. Every genuine piece contains 0.9675 troy ounces of pure gold, which is roughly the same as one troy ounce of a modern bullion coin. That fact alone sets a hard price floor tied to spot gold.

Beyond the floor, the market rewards specific years, mint marks, type varieties, and certified grades with sharp premiums. This guide walks through the design story, the specifications, the key dates, and the traps most owners fall into when they try to sell.

A short history of the design

President Theodore Roosevelt personally commissioned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1904 to redesign American coinage. Roosevelt wanted coins with the artistic depth of ancient Greek pieces. Saint-Gaudens delivered a double eagle design in very high relief.

The sculptor died in August 1907, before the coins entered mass production. His original 1907 pattern, known today as the Ultra High Relief, took up to nine strokes of a medal press to fully bring out the design. Only about 20 pattern pieces of the Ultra High Relief are known. One sold at auction in 2005 for 2,990,000 dollars.

The Mint then produced a small run of the High Relief coin for circulation, with the date in Roman numerals MCMVII. Chief Engraver Charles Barber modified the dies for regular production, lowering the relief and changing the date to Arabic numerals. Series production continued at reduced relief until 1933.

Verified physical specifications

A coin sold as a Saint-Gaudens double eagle that does not match every attribute below is a fake, a copy, or a completely different piece. Weight and diameter are the first two screens.

The type-shifts that change your coin

The series has three type-shifts that a buyer must recognize. Mixing them up is the single most common identification error.

First, the 1907 Ultra High Relief pattern. About 20 pattern pieces exist. The rims are wire-thin, the relief is extreme, and the date is MCMVII. These almost never come to market. If one does, it sells in seven figures at a major auction house.

Second, the 1907 High Relief regular issue. Mintage was 12,367 pieces. The date is still in Roman numerals MCMVII and the relief is markedly higher than any later strike. This is a distinct type and carries a strong premium in every grade over the standard Arabic-numeral coin.

Third, the No Motto versus With Motto split. From 1907 through mid-1908 the reverse of the double eagle did not carry the phrase IN GOD WE TRUST. In 1908 the Mint added the motto above the sun on the reverse. From late 1908 through 1933 every double eagle is a With Motto coin. Two of the 1908 dates exist in both varieties, and the split is a common early stumble.

Where the mint mark sits on the obverse

On the Saint-Gaudens double eagle the mint mark, when present, sits on the obverse of the coin, just above the date at the bottom edge. It is a single small letter above the numeral. D means Denver. S means San Francisco. No letter in that spot means the coin was struck at Philadelphia.

This is a break from many other United States coin series, where the mint mark sits on the reverse. Reading the mint mark correctly is the first identification step because several of the key dates in this series are the branch-mint issues, not the Philadelphia coins.

Any other letter in that position on a Saint-Gaudens double eagle is not correct for the series. A W would be a modern 2009 commemorative, which uses a different composition and a much thicker planchet. Any other stamped letter is a fabrication or damage.

Melt floor: the near-ounce of gold in every coin

The near-ounce of pure gold in the coin sets a hard floor that no genuine Saint-Gaudens double eagle can trade below. That number moves with the spot price of gold. The math is short and worth showing once.

The melt floor is the single most useful anchor for a first estimate. Look up the current spot price, multiply by 0.9675, and you have the metal floor for any date in the series. What sits above that floor is a function of the date, the mint, the type, the grade, and the certification.

Verified mintages and key dates

Mintage alone is not a perfect guide to scarcity in this series. Many high-mintage dates from the 1920s and 1930s were melted by the Treasury in the mid-1930s after gold was recalled. Original mintage sets the starting universe. Survival rate today sets the actual market scarcity.

The pattern is consistent. Any coin dated 1929 or later, and any 1920-S or 1921, is a serious rarity because the government melted most of the mintage in the mid-1930s. A high original mintage in that stretch is not the same as a common coin today.

How grade drives the premium above melt

Grade is the second largest lever on any Saint-Gaudens double eagle. Sheldon-scale grade runs from Poor-1 to MS-70, and the price behavior across that scale is very different on a common 1924 Philadelphia coin than on a 1927-D or a 1930-S.

On a common circulated date such as a 1924, a 1925 or a 1928 Philadelphia coin, low grades trade at the melt floor plus a modest premium. A single grade point above About Uncirculated matters less than the underlying gold price. These coins are effectively priced as generic Saint-Gaudens gold once the grade is anywhere between Very Fine and About Uncirculated.

On a genuine key date, a single grade point can multiply the price. A 1927-D in low mint state and the same date in a top-tier certified grade are separated by a very wide gap. Every candidate key-date coin should be certified by an independent grading service before any sale.

Recent auction records for the finest known examples of the classic key dates run well into the six figures. For the 1927-D and 1933, the finest known pieces reach seven figures.

The rule to remember. On common dates, gold price moves the price. On key dates, grade moves the price. Certification tells you which world your coin lives in.

The 1933 double eagle and its legal status

The 1933 double eagle is the most famous rarity of the series and one of the most famous coins in the world. The story is a matter of public court record and it changes how you should treat any coin dated 1933.

The Mint struck 445,500 double eagles in 1933. On April 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, which required most privately held gold to be returned to the Treasury. Because the 1933 double eagles were struck after that order and never officially released, the Mint melted almost the entire mintage in the mid-1930s.

A small number of pieces left the Mint through what the Secret Service later established as an inside-job embezzlement. Two coins were sent to the Smithsonian for the National Numismatic Collection. Beyond those two, the government considers every 1933 double eagle stolen property and subject to seizure.

One exception exists. The Farouk specimen was monetized by the Treasury in 2001 as part of a legal settlement. It is the only 1933 double eagle legal for private ownership.

That coin sold in 2002 for 7,590,020 dollars. It sold again at Sotheby's on June 8, 2021 for 18,872,250 dollars, the highest price ever paid at auction for a single coin at that time. Ten additional 1933 coins surfaced in 2003 in the Langbord family, and after a decade of litigation the courts ruled that the coins remain property of the United States government.

The practical takeaway. A coin dated 1933 that is not the Weitzman specimen is either a modern counterfeit or federal property. Do not buy one, do not sell one, and if a piece surfaces in an estate, contact a numismatic attorney before doing anything else with it.

Counterfeits, altered dates, and modern struck fakes

Because the Saint-Gaudens double eagle carries close to an ounce of gold, counterfeits fall into two economic categories. Some fakes exist to defraud the melt buyer with base metal at gold weight. Others exist to defraud the numismatic buyer by faking a key date on top of a real gold coin.

The first category is cast copies and gold-plated tungsten or lead cores. The coin looks like a Saint-Gaudens but weighs wrong, rings wrong, and often measures slightly off on diameter and thickness. A jeweler's scale and a caliper screen most of these in under a minute.

The second category is harder to spot. Modern die-struck fakes from imported dies can be very close to a genuine coin in weight, diameter, and edge lettering because they are struck in gold at roughly the correct fineness. These are typically caught on die diagnostics, on subtle relief differences, or on edge-letter alignment that independent graders know by memory.

A third pattern is date and mint-mark alteration. A common 1928 Philadelphia coin can be altered to read 1927-D. The base coin is real gold, the correct weight, the correct diameter and the correct edge. Only the date and mint mark are fabricated. Detection requires magnification and often die-marker comparison, and it is the reason every key-date coin needs third-party certification before any four-figure or five-figure sale.

The cleaned-coin and jewelry-mount traps

Two owner behaviors destroy value on this series more often than any counterfeit. Cleaning and mounting.

Cleaning a Saint-Gaudens double eagle with a polishing cloth, silver polish, jewelry dip, baking soda, or a soft brush leaves hairlines and disturbed luster that trained graders detect on sight. A cleaned coin receives a details grade rather than a numeric grade, and the market discount is typically 40 to 70 percent versus an original example in the same grade.

Mounting the coin in a bezel, a ring, or a pendant creates rim damage and often edge tooling from bezel prongs. A mounted coin, once removed, carries a permanent penalty in the market. On common dates the penalty is severe. On key dates the dollar loss is very large.

The rule is short. Do not clean the coin. Do not mount the coin. If a suspected Saint-Gaudens is dirty, dusty, or discolored, leave it exactly as found and let a professional look at it before any surface work is attempted.

How to work through a candidate coin

These are the steps a knowledgeable buyer runs on any coin claimed to be a Saint-Gaudens double eagle, in the order to run them.

1. Confirm the coin is a Saint-Gaudens double eagle. The obverse shows Liberty striding forward with a torch and olive branch, backed by the sun. The reverse shows a flying eagle above the sun. Any other design on a twenty-dollar gold piece is the earlier Liberty Head type, not this series.
2. Weigh the coin on a jewelry scale. A genuine Saint-Gaudens weighs 33.436 grams. A digital scale that reads to two decimal places is enough. Any weight far outside 33.2 to 33.6 grams flags a plated core, a base-metal replica, or a heavily damaged coin.
3. Measure the diameter. The coin is 34.1 mm across. A caliper that reads to a tenth of a millimeter is enough. A diameter far outside 33.9 to 34.3 mm flags a fake or a modern non-circulating strike.
4. Read the date on the obverse. A Roman numeral MCMVII date is the 1907 High Relief type. Arabic numerals from 1907 through 1933 are the regular-production type. A 1933 date requires professional handling because of the legal status of the year.
5. Read the mint mark just above the date. D is Denver. S is San Francisco. No mark is Philadelphia. Compare the letter to a certified reference image because altered mint marks are the single most common numismatic fraud on this series.
6. Check the reverse for the motto. If IN GOD WE TRUST appears above the sun on the reverse, the coin is a With Motto piece. If the motto is absent, the coin is a No Motto piece, which only exists on 1907 and 1908 dated coins.
7. Inspect the edge for the lettering. The edge reads E PLURIBUS UNUM with stars between the words. A missing or mangled edge lettering is a strong counterfeit indicator.
8. Do not clean the coin. Any polishing, dipping, or scrubbing lowers the grade a certified grader will assign. Cleaning can cut the value by half or more.
9. Submit to an independent grading service before selling. A certified grade from PCGS, NGC, or an equivalent independent service is the only price signal the numismatic market takes seriously on any key date or high-grade candidate.

What your coin is probably not

Saint-Gaudens double eagle FAQ

By the Harry’s Coins Editorial team. Last reviewed August 2026.