Object Details
- mint
- U.S. Mint, Philadelphia
- designer
- Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
- Description (Brief)
- One (1) 10 dollar coin
- United States, 1908
- Obverse Image: Left-facing Liberty wearing a feather headdress, 13 stars along top edge of coin.
- Obverse Text: LIBERTY / 1908
- Reverse Image: Eagle with wings folded standing on top of a bundle of arrows and branch.
- Reverse Text: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / E PLURIBUS UNUM / TEN DOLLARS
- Description
- In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt asked sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to lead an effort to redesign American coinage. Saint-Gaudens developed a concept that many consider the most beautiful American coin ever conceived.
- In addition to this $20 Dollar coin, Saint-Gaudens also redesigned the $10 coin, or eagle, but did not live to see this effort through to completion. With Saint-Gaudens's passing, the eagle project was entrusted to Chief Engraver Barber.
- There was little he could do to bowdlerize the artist's original: Saint-Gaudens had put most of his efforts for high relief coinage into the double eagle. His ten-dollar piece offered modest innovations in terms of its relief, but it didn't awake Barber's opposition to the extent that the double eagle design had. The redesigned eagle was struck through early 1933, essentially in the form in which Saint-Gaudens had created it.
- There was one innovation in mid-1908. Theodore Roosevelt frowned on the inclusion of the motto "In God We Trust," on American money. He said religion and commerce didn't mix. So neither the new double eagle nor the new eagle bore the traditional inscription for the first year or so. But Roosevelt would soon be on his way out of office and the motto was reinstituted on both coins. This coin is one of the earlier "godless" ones. When the motto returned, it appeared before the eagle's breast on the reverse.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Credit Line
- Transfer: US Mint
- 1908
- ID Number
- 1985.0441.1286
- catalog number
- 1985.0441.1286
- accession number
- 1985.0441
- Object Name
- coin
- Physical Description
- gold (overall metal)
- 0 (overall die axis)
- 0 (overall die axis measurement)
- struck (overall production method)
- Measurements
- overall: wt. 16.721 g
- place of issue
- United States
- Related Publication
- Zoomable Image and Details
- Glossary of Coins and Currency Terms
- Related Web Publication
- http://americanhistory.si.edu/coins/glossary.cfm
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: National Numismatic Collection
- Coins
- Numismatics
- Coins, Currency and Medals
- Legendary Coins
- National Museum of American History
- Record ID
- nmah_1088367
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746a9-5554-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
