History of the Double Gold Eagle
Until the time of the great California Gold Rush, the largest minted coin in the United States was a ten dollar face value coin, which was comprised of approximately ½ of a troy ounce. For those who want to know a troy ounce is, as taken directly from Wikipedia, for who else can say it better than a great many of our peers who enjoy sharing their knowledge freely on the internet itself.
“The troy ounce (ozt) is a unit of imperial measure. In the present day it is most commonly used to gauge the weight and therefore the price of precious metals.
The troy ounce is part of the troy weights system derived from the Roman monetary system. The Romans used bronze bars of varying weights as currency. An aes grave weighed equal to 1 pound. One twelfth of an aes grave was called an uncia, or in English an "ounce". Later standardization would change the ounce to 1/16 of a pound (the avoirdupois ounce), but the 1/12 pound troy ounce was retained for the measure of precious metals. At 480 grains, the troy ounce is heavier than the avoirdupois ounce, which weighs 437.5 grains. A grain is 64.7989 milligrams (mg); hence one troy ounce is 31.1035 grams (g), about 10 percent more than the avoirdupois ounce, which is 28.3495 g.”
Now with that said, when in 1849 the Congress of the United States authorized a twenty dollar coin, it was called the 'double gold eagle' because it was larger and held twice the value of the original. Soon after, and for years to come, gold came in from Nevada, Arizona Colorado and even Alaska, hundreds of millions of ounces actually. These double gold eagle coins were then created and depicted the boom of the “Gold Rush” itselfs and also showed the inherent wealth of the United States in the later half of the 1800's.
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