1911 $20 Saint Gaudens Double Eagle PCGS MS62 Ex.Rive d'Or Collection

Here’s an attractive piece in a very collectible grade that won’t break the bank. The double eagle designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens is considered the most beautiful American coin ever produced. And now you have an excellent opportunity to add a “Saint” to your collection. PCGS has graded 1,004 examples as MS62 with 1,891 finer. Collectors Universe gives this issue a price of $3,000.00 in MS62.

Bust of Hettie Anderson by Saint-Gaudens, the model who posed for his 'Victory 'in both the William Tecumseh Sherman sculpture and the double eagle coin. Photo: wikipedia.

It was only in 1991 that the numismatic community discovered the identity of the model for the Saint-Gaudens double eagle. Her name was Hettie Anderson, a light-skinned mixed-race woman who arrive in Manhattan in the 1890s. Quite a few artists and sculptors sought to depict what one newspaper account described as her "creamy skin, crisp curling hair, and warm brown eyes."

Hettie's image represents the winged Greek goddess Victory in Saint-Gaudens's equestrian sculpture honoring Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, as well as the same upon the Double Eagle (1907-1933). In 1899, the New York Journal and Advertiser wrote, "There is nothing in Greek sculpture finer than her figure. [It is] imposing [and] her carriage queenly..."

She fled bitter prejudice in the post-Reconstruction South to model for the likes of Daniel Chester French, Adolph Weinman, and Saint-Gaudens. Upon arriving in New York, Hettie worked as a clerk and seamstress while studying at the Art Students League. Research tells us that before the Civil War, Anderson's family was designated 'free colored persons'; they owned land and earned wages. In New York, she and her mother were listed in the census as white.

"I need her badly," wrote Saint-Gaudens to a friend. He wrote in a draft of his memoir that he counted on her stamina for "posing patiently, steadily and thoroughly in the Spirit one wished..."