1925 $20 Saint Gaudens Double Eagle PCGS MS66 (CAC)

"The 1925 is nearly always very sharply struck," writes gold expert David Akers. "The lustre and color on most specimens is typically very good to excellent. All specimens are frosty. Although the color varies rather widely, most specimens are in the orange or rose colored gold category. Many examples also have appealing greenish gold iridescence or highlights."

PCGS has graded 1,291 in MS66, with 55 finer. In CAC, there are 104 in MS66 with only 2 finer. 

Hettie Anderson, who modeled as Liberty for Saint-Gaudens' famed Double Eagle.

It was only in 1991 that the numismatic community discovered the identity of the model for the Saint-Gaudens double eagle. Her name was Hettie Anderson, a light-skinned mixed-race woman who arrive in Manhattan in the 1890. Quite a few artists and sculptors sought to depict what one newspaper account described as her "creamy skin, crisp curling hair, and warm brown eyes."

Hettie's image represents the winged Greek goddess Victory in Saint-Gaudens's equestrian sculpture honoring Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, as well as the same upon the Double Eagle (1907-1933). In 1899, the New York Journal and Advertiser wrote, "There is nothing in Greek sculpture finer than her figure. [It is] imposing [and] her carriage queenly..."

She fled bitter prejudice in the post-Reconstruction South to model for the likes of Daniel Chester French, Adolf Weinman, and Saint-Gaudens. Upon arriving in New York, Hettie worked as a clerk and seamstress while studying at the Art Students League. Research tells us that before the Civil War, Anderson's family was designated 'free colored persons'; they owned land and earned wages. In New York, she and her mother were listed in the census as white.

"I need her badly," wrote Saint-Gaudens to a friend. He wrote in a draft of his memoir that he counted on her stamina for "posing patiently, steadily and thoroughly in the Spirit one wished..."