1909-D $20 St. Gaudens (1909-D Saint Gaudens Double Eagle) PCGS MS64. This rare 1909-D Double Eagle glows with subdued mint luster within its devices. A few surface abrasion marks on the obverse keep this coin from a higher mint state grade. Slight weakness is seen on the rays above WE on the reverse. All of the other details are sharp and clear. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Ireland, the son of a shoemaker. He became one of Americas most successful sculptors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1848, his family moved from Dublin to New York before his first birthday. When he was thirteen, Saint-Gaudens left school and became an apprentice to a cameo cutter. He also took classes at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. When he was nineteen, he moved to Europe where he studied classical art and architecture.

His first commission was a statue of Admiral Farragut that is still in Madison Square Park in New York. By the 1890s Saint-Gaudens had produced his statues of Diana and Abraham Lincoln, both considered some of his greatest works. He also created works such as the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on Boston Common and the equestrian monument to Civil War general John A. Logan in Chicago. He became part of a group of new artists and architects and worked for an architectural firm for whom he produced a group of monuments and decorative sculpture. Throughout his career, he worked with architects creating works that were designed specifically for the sites they were building. At the entrance to New Yorks Central Park is his bronze statue of General Sherman led by Victory. It took him eleven years to complete this project.

Saint-Gaudens moved to his summer home in Cornish, New Hampshire in 1900. Joined there by a community of artists, Saint-Gaudens spent his final years. He died of stomach cancer in 1907 just after he created the beautiful high relief models for the eagle and double eagle coins at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt, for whom he had earlier designed the second inaugural medal.

Roosevelt wanted to see that the nations coinage was redesigned. Saint-Gaudens agreed with him that the coinage was atrociously hideous. Roosevelts pet crime was to bypass the banal Mint Engraver, Charles Barber, and let an outsider design the new coins. Although Barber objected and resisted, eventually Saint-Gaudens designs came into use. However, in the end, Barber was able to modify the designs by lowering the relief. At the behest of Congress, he added the motto IN GOD WE TRUST.

The 1909-D double eagle had an original mintage of 52,500, which is on the lower end of the mintages that ranged as high as 8,816,000 in 1928. In its population report PCGS shows 663 in all grades. In MS64 there are 146 with 20 better.