Gold Coin Use

[mick56]

Up to what approximate year were gold coins normally used?

 

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[Bassfish]

1933 it was confiscated.

 

[Saturna]

Here's an excerpt from a gold coin website that I found interesting...



Although today it is common to read that the United States was on the "gold standard" from 1795 onward, in actuality our country did not adopt the gold standard system until the year 1900, at which time the United States was one of the last developed nations to do so. Under the gold standard, countries participating in this stored gold coins and bullion in central banks and simply exchanged currency or certificates among themselves to settle transactions. Thus, after the year 1900 large quantities of American coins were stored in European, South American, and other vaults and were seldom moved. In the meantime, within the United States gold coins were rarely seen in day to day commerce.

If you had been a typical citizen in the year 1900, chances are that during everyday grocery purchases, real estate transactions, and any other business transacted during a given 12-month period not a single gold coin would have been encountered, particularly if you lived in the East (gold coins were seen in circulation with more frequency in the West). Although gold issues were not needed in everyday circulation, they continued to be minted in record quantities. For example, the year 1904 saw a coinage of over six million double eagles at Philadelphia and over five million in San Francisco. What happened to them? Most were shipped overseas.

Gold coinage continued in large quantities, and in the 1920s, when gold coins were mainly kept in banks and rarely seen in circulation, record numbers were produced. The year 1928 saw a production of 8,816,000 double eagles, an all-time high!


http://www.goldcoinsinfo.com/historical_background_of_gold_coins.html


Jay

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Looking in the coin book, you will see that they were minted up till the late 1920s or early '30s (depending on the denomination). But your question is: "Up to what approximate year were gold coins normally used?" I would say that the answer to that is that very soon after the turn of the century, very little were carried around as they had been before in pocket-fashion. If you were to survey all the md'rs, for instance, who have found gold coins, very few ever post-date 1900. Most are pre 1900 dates. For example: I have 11 so far, and only 1 is in the 1900s (a 1914s $2.50). Of all the gold coins I can think of that've been found in CA that I can think of (30 or so just off the top of my head), only 1 or 2 others were after 1900-ish. Not sure about east coast.

I believe the reason for this is that times were changing in the 10s, 20s, & 30s. Paper money was becoming more widely used. Telegraphing larger amounts was becoming safer than carrying one's life-savings while moving/travelling, checks (drafts written against banks) were becoming more widely used, etc...

I suspect that at all times in those days, gold coins were taken out for large purchases, and not used like pocket change, in the sense we think of today. Ie.: they'd be your "savings", only taken out for larger purchases, like to buy a horse, or downpayment on land, etc.... Remember, a $5 gold piece could be a miner's or logger's wage for an entire week! So to loose that, would be like us loosing $500 today? Sure, we might have $500 in our wallet now and then, but odds are, a few $20s at the most, at any given time (well, ok, so we have ATMs and credit cards now ) But you can imagine it wasn't like what you whip out to pay for dinner, but rather, something you converted to when saving, or buying with intent? JMHO. So they are very hard to find.