1905 Double Eagle (1905 $20) PCGS MS63. The Liberty double eagle design is credited to James B. Longacre but has its roots in Christian Gobrecht's $10 Eagle of 1839. The obverse features a Greco-Roman head of Liberty facing left, with hair tied in a bun and curls flowing down to the base of the bust. She is wearing a coronet inscribed with LIBERTY. Thirteen stars surround the bust with the date positioned below. The reverse depicts an eagle with outstretched wings holding an olive branch and arrows.

There are three different reverses for the Liberty double eagle. The Type 1 features a shield with straight sides. This reverse design gave way to the Type 2, which exhibits a rounded ornate shield with the motto IN GOD WE TRUST added to the oval of stars above the eagle. The featured coin is the Type 3 version of the Liberty double eagle. At the end of its thirty-one year run, a total of 64,137,477 Type 3 business strikes were coined. Millions of Type 3 Liberty double eagles were shipped overseas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to be used as bank reserves. When gold coin production ceased in 1933 and Americans were required to turn in their gold at face value for melting, the flow of double eagles out of the country was enormous. Fortunately, foreign hoards turned out to be the source of many rarities that would otherwise have been destroyed.

The example displayed for your consideration, a truly splendid 1905 Type 3 $20 Liberty double eagle, graded MS-63 by PCGS, comes from a mintage of 58,919 pieces; far less than the preceding years total mintage of 6.3 million examples. Frequently encountered in grades AU58 to MS61 it is considerably tougher to locate in grades MS62 and above. The surfaces of this example are smooth and velvety and are accompanied by sharply struck devices. A premium example of a scarce date, the ideal coin for the collector who is looking for a top quality rare gold coin to add to their numismatic portfolio.