1912 $20 Saint Gaudens Double Eagle PCGS MS65

1912 $20 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle PCGS MS65--$22,500.00

      We at AUCM are extremely proud to offer this great rarity of the Saint-Gaudens $20 gold series for your consideration. This is an elusive example of the 1912 Saint in the exalted grade of MS65. A coin of such numismatic importance rarely hits the open market. Such opportunities rarely present themselves to the refined collector.

      Jeff Garrett writes, "This date is very popular....As a result of its low mintage, the 1912 Double Eagle is quite scarce in all levels of Mint State. Most seen are heavily bag marked....very few have been found in Gem [MS65] condition." Gold expert David Akers tells us, "The 1912 is...a very scarce issue, one that is especially difficult to find in high grade....Gems [MS65] are really very rare....The 1912 is always very sharply struck, the most sharply struck of any of the Philadelphia Mint issues from 1907 to 1915....The surfaces are usually frosty....Color is always very good and is usually a rich yellow gold...Top grade examples of the 1912 have more 'eye appeal' than any of the other early Philadelphia Mint issues..."

      Numismatic scholar and art critic Cornelius Vermeule writes, "The double eagle is perhaps the most majestic coin ever to bear our national imprint. The Liberty striding forward is as grand in miniature as the Hellenistic Victory of Samothrace on a heroic scale. The eagle in flight against the sun on the reverse achieves complete domination of motion and expanding vista over the confines of a tiny tondo. Although the authorities at the Mint flattened the relief to facilitate striking and handling, this coin has remained a forceful demonstration that modern, mechanical coinage need in no way be pedestrian." Discussing both Saint-Gaudens' $10 eagle along with his $20 double eagle, Vermeule writes, "Both coins seems as modern a century after they were conceived as any issues, American or otherwise, produced in the past generation, and compared with what has been tolerated heretofore in the United States, both burst as artistic skyrockets in the horizons of our academic creativity."