(via Fr. 119 $10 1901 Legal Tender PMG Choice Extremely Fine 45 EPQ..... | Lot #34253 | Heritage Auctions)
Fr. 119 $10 1901 Legal Tender
Source: currency.ha.com
Billy Baeder, a Royersford currency collector, who co-owns a car-repair shop, holds what could be the most valuable piece of currency printed since 1929: a 1933 Silver Certificate with the serial number A00000001A...
Source: philly.com
1907 $10 Wire Rim MS64 NGC. The 1907 Wire Rim tens are technically patterns (Judd-1901) yet are collected alongside the regular-issue coins in the series. The coins were struck in an amount of roughly 500 pieces (some sources number 472). When one stops to consider the 1907 "Wire Rim" tens versus the MCMVII "High Relief" twenties, the nomenclature of the former feels a bit ironic. Both represent the issues that are most faithful to the original Saint-Gaudens design concept, translated into coins that were still of high relief and that required special care for striking -- coins that would never have been struck without the "bully pulpit" of President Theodore Roosevelt and the superb skill of Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
These were never coins that could be produced on high-speed production presses, as Mint Engraver Charles Barber ceaselessly pointed out. But to call the 1907 "Wire Rims" such is to overemphasize what is, in reality, a rather minor feature. In fact, most of the MCMVII High Reliefs also feature a wire rim, and they are called as such to distinguish them from the Flat Rim pieces -- yet again, that terminology somewhat misses the point...
Source: coins.ha.com
mudwerks reblogged
One of the gold 10 dollar coins struck with Smithson’s sovereigns in 1838. National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
top: Queen Victoria, pictured on this gold sovereign in the National Numismatic Collection, ascended to the throne in 1837, one year after the U.S Government was named a beneficiary in a British scientist's will.
bottom: One of the gold 10 dollar coins struck with Smithson’s sovereigns in 1838.
This sovereign was part of a bequest by James Smithson, a wealthy British chemist and mineralogist. When he died in 1829, he left everything to his nephew, Henry James Dickinson. But, according to his will, if Dickinson died without leaving an heir, all of Smithson’s assets—worth 104,960 gold sovereigns—would go "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."
In 1835, Dickinson died without heirs. Congress accepted the bequest in 1836 and the Smithsonian Institution was born, although the money wasn’t received until 1838.
Meanwhile, other developments were taking place. In 1837, King William IV died and his niece ascended to the throne: Queen Victoria. In 1838, when it came time to pass along Smithson’s fortune, the U.S. government demanded newly struck coins with the profile of the recently crowned queen.
But the coin’s journey wasn’t over. When Smithson’s gold reached our shores, the government melted down almost all of the coins (worth $508,318.46) and re-struck them as American 10 dollar gold coins, known as "Eagles" (hence a 20 dollar coin was called a "Double Eagle"). The 1838 sovereign shown above was one of two that were saved from being melted...
Source: blog.americanhistory.si.edu