1849 Double Eagle

The 1849 Double Eagle is a pattern coin representing the first time the United States Mint struck a double eagle, the twenty-dollar gold piece newly authorized by Congress in response to the flood of gold arriving from the California Gold Rush. Only a small number of pattern pieces were struck to test the new denomination and design before regular production began.

Today, a single confirmed example is known to survive, held in the Smithsonian Institution's National Numismatic Collection, making it effectively unobtainable for private collectors. As such, it occupies a unique place in American numismatics: a coin every collector of U.S. gold knows about, but essentially none will ever own.

Its significance lies in being the literal first of its denomination, marking the birth of the double eagle, which would go on to become one of the most iconic and widely collected series in American coinage, including the later Liberty Head and Saint-Gaudens types.

The discovery of gold in California in 1848 led to a massive influx of gold bullion into the U.S. monetary system, prompting Congress to authorize a new, larger gold coin, the double eagle, worth twenty dollars, under the Act of March 3, 1849, alongside the smaller gold dollar.

Mint engraver James B. Longacre designed the new denomination, adapting the Liberty Head (Coronet) style already used on other gold coins. Before regular production began in 1850, the Mint struck a small number of 1849-dated pattern pieces to evaluate the design and striking process.

Only one 1849 double eagle is known to have survived into modern times; it was retained by the Mint and eventually became part of the national coin collection now housed at the Smithsonian Institution, rather than entering private hands.

The obverse shows Longacre's Coronet Liberty Head facing left, wearing a coronet inscribed LIBERTY, with thirteen stars around the border and the date 1849 below, a design closely related to the Liberty Head double eagles that would be struck for regular circulation starting in 1850.

The reverse depicts a heraldic eagle with a shield on its breast, arrows and an olive branch in its talons, encircled by UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the denomination TWENTY D. below.

Because only a single example survives and it resides in a museum collection, private collectors will never encounter one for sale; any coin offered as an "1849 double eagle" outside of that institutional context should be treated with extreme skepticism.

As a unique coin held permanently in the Smithsonian's National Numismatic Collection, the 1849 Double Eagle is not for sale and has no active market price; its worth is purely historical and symbolic rather than transactional.

It is often cited by numismatists as one of the most significant coins in American history precisely because it represents the very beginning of the double eagle denomination, a series that would later include the celebrated Saint-Gaudens design.

Collectors interested in the story of the double eagle typically pursue early circulation-strike double eagles from 1850 onward instead, since the unique 1849 pattern itself is permanently outside the market.