1914 St. Gaudens $20 1907-1933 MS65

History

President Theodore Roosevelt set the series in motion in 1904 when he sought to beautify American coinage and named Augustus Saint-Gaudens as the artist for the job. This was a direct commission rather than a design competition; Roosevelt had been impressed by the inaugural medal Saint-Gaudens made for him in 1905 and then asked him to prepare new designs for the double eagle and eagle, along with a one-cent piece that never went into production. Saint-Gaudens had a poor prior history with the Mint and its chief engraver Charles E. Barber, and the work was delayed by his declining health and by the difficulties of striking his high-relief models. By 1914 the double eagle had long since settled into the low-relief production format, and San Francisco was striking the type in quantities that far surpassed the other mints, a pattern that held until about 1922.

Details

Augustus Saint-Gaudens designed both faces. The San Francisco Mint struck 1,498,000 for circulation, placing its S mintmark above the date on the obverse. Each coin contains 0.96750 troy ounce of gold in an alloy of 90 percent gold and 10 percent copper, weighing approximately 33.44 grams at roughly 34 mm in diameter and 2.41 mm thick. The edge is lettered E PLURIBUS UNUM with stars interspersed between the words.

Features

The obverse shows Liberty striding forward with a torch in her right hand and an olive branch in her left, the rays of the sun behind her and the U.S. Capitol at lower left, with stars circling the design and LIBERTY above. A 1914-S carries the 48-star obverse adopted in 1912, and Saint-Gaudens's ASG monogram appears below the date. The reverse depicts an eagle in flight above a sunburst, lettered UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and TWENTY DOLLARS, with IN GOD WE TRUST, which was absent from the 1907 reverse and added in 1908. The national motto appears nowhere on the faces, only on the lettered edge.

Notable facts

• The 46-star obverse was used from 1907 until it was discontinued in 1911, so the star count alone separates the earlier issues from a 1914-S.
• Fewer than two dozen 1907 Extremely High Relief pieces with concave fields were made and are treated as patterns today, followed by 11,250 High Relief coins for circulation before that format was dropped.
• PCGS attributes the abundance of surviving 1914-S examples to hoards of thousands that began surfacing in the 1960s, coins shipped abroad for international payments before the 1933 gold recall.
• The date is scarce at MS-65+ and MS-66 and virtually unknown any finer, despite being one of the most available pre-1920 issues of the series.
• The prohibitive rarities of the series are the 1927-D and the 1933, with the 1920-S, 1921, 1926-D, 1927-S and the issues after 1928 also very tough; the 1914-S is not a key date.
• The issue is cataloged as PCGS 9166 and NGC ID 26FU.