1909-S $20 Saint Gaudens Double Eagle, PCGS MS64 (CAC)

Jeff Garrett writes, "The mintage for this San Francisco issue soared after a slow start in 1908. The date can be found easily in all grades thru MS 65. In Gem condition, however, the 1909-S is very rare.... It is quite underrated in Gem condition. Most examples seen are well struck, but bag marks plague most examples." However, no "bag marks plague" this pristine specimen! Gold specialist David Akers writes, "Most 1909-S double eagles are very sharply struck and have 'soft' frosty surfaces and some granularity. A few are rather satiny.... Lustre is good to very good .... Color ... is a strong point with most specimens having very appealing greenish gold to light rose or orange color. Many specimens have distinctly 'rounded' rims."

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."