The other day I was watching a pawn show where customer bring in their items for sell to the pawn store. In this show the woman had found and old gold eagle coin. Come to find out that is one of the most counterfeited coins in the world. I guess because of its collectors value. I guess it being made of gold does not hurt it either. Any the store owner brought in an expert and he verified it as real and in very good condition, worth about twelve hundred dollars. Lucky her she found it a house she had just bought. The more I search the more things I find interesting about the American Eagle coins.
The American eagle coin is a base unit of money denomination issued only for gold coins manufactured at the United States Mint. The gold coin eagle were stopped minted in 1933. The American eagle was the largest of the four main decimal base units of denomination used for circulating coinage in the United States. In 1933 gold was withdrawn from circulation. A dark day for us collectors. The four main base-units of denomination of coinage used in the US were the cent, the dime, the dollar, and the eagle. This seemed a lot like metric where a dime is 10 worth cents, a dollar is worth 10 dimes, and an eagle is worth 10 dollars.
Some of the things I thought was cool about the eagle was denomination served as the basis of the gold quarter-eagle, the gold half-eagle, the eagle, and the double-eagle gold coins. If you can find one, the eagle is still legal tender for all your debts public and private at their face values. These face values of eagles do not reflect their intrinsic value which is much greater and is mainly dictated by their troy weight and the current precious metal price.
It would be hard paying my bills with gold coins.
With the exceptions of the gold dollar coin, the gold three-dollar coin, the three-cent nickel, and the five-cent nickel, the unit of denomination of coinage prior to 1933 was conceptually linked to the precious or semi-precious metal that comprised a majority of the alloy used in that coin. In this regard the United States followed long-standing European practice of different base-unit denominations for different precious and semi-precious metals. In the United States, the cent was the base-unit of denomination in copper. The dime and dollar were the base-units of denomination in silver. The eagle was the base-unit of denomination in gold. A $10 eagle in 1800 would have the equivalent purchasing power of $127.76 today.
Entries (RSS)