On 22 September 1795, the fledgling United States Mint in Philadelphia released 1,097 of America’s first $10 gold coins, known as “eagles,” into circulation. It was a quiet milestone for a young nation still working out what its money should be, but it set a standard that would shape American coinage for well over a century.
Four hundred of those first eagles went straight to the Bank of Pennsylvania, which had deposited raw gold with the Mint to be struck into coin. That detail says a lot about how money worked then. Banks and individuals brought metal to the Mint, and the Mint turned it into standardised, trusted coins. The value came from the gold itself, not from a promise printed on paper.
The Eagle: America’s Top Coin
The $10 eagle was the highest denomination the United States had authorised at the time. Struck in 22-karat gold and designed by Mint engraver Robert Scot, it showed Liberty on the front and a small eagle perched on a palm branch on the back. Ten dollars was a serious sum in 1795, well beyond what most people handled in everyday life, which is one reason surviving early eagles are so rare and so prized by collectors today.
More importantly, the eagle carried real precious-metal value. If you held one, you held gold. That principle, that money should be backed by something tangible, sat at the heart of the young republic’s monetary system.
225 Years Later: Silver Returns
History has a neat way of rhyming. On the same date exactly 225 years later, 22 September 2020, the US House of Representatives passed legislation that would bring back two other icons of American money: the Morgan and Peace silver dollars. The bill became law, and the US Mint began releasing new versions of both coins to collectors in 2021, reviving designs that hadn’t been struck for circulation in about a century.
- 1795: America released its first $10 gold eagle
- 2020: Congress moved to revive its historic silver dollars
The new Morgan and Peace dollars are collector pieces rather than pocket change, but the demand for them showed that Americans’ connection to hard money never really disappeared.
The Australian Angle: Our Own Golden Chapter
Australians have their own deep history with gold and silver coinage, and it runs remarkably parallel to the American story.
Before Australia had coins of its own, the colony of New South Wales was chronically short of cash. In 1813, Governor Lachlan Macquarie famously solved the problem by punching the centres out of imported Spanish silver dollars, creating the “holey dollar” and the “dump.” Both circulated as official currency, and today they are among the most valuable coins in Australian numismatics.
Then came the gold rushes of the 1850s, which transformed the colonies almost overnight. To turn the flood of raw gold into trusted money, the Sydney Mint opened in 1855 as the first branch of Britain’s Royal Mint outside London. Melbourne followed in 1872 and Perth in 1899. Together they struck millions of gold sovereigns and half sovereigns, many of which circulated across the British Empire.
Here’s a detail that ties the two stories together: the Australian-struck sovereign was also 22-karat gold, the same fineness as America’s first eagle. On both sides of the Pacific, “real money” meant the same thing.
Gold coins faded from everyday Australian use in the early 20th century, and the link between the pound and gold was effectively broken during the Depression. But the Perth Mint, still operating today and owned by the Western Australian Government, carried the tradition forward, launching the Australian Gold Nugget bullion coin in 1986. Australian bullion coins remain legal tender, although their face value is a tiny fraction of the metal inside them.
And Australians have already shown what they do when coins are worth more than their face value. When decimal currency arrived in 1966, the original round 50-cent coin contained 80 per cent silver. As silver prices rose, the metal was soon worth more than 50 cents, and the coins vanished from circulation into drawers, jars and collections. The government replaced it with the familiar 12-sided cupronickel version in 1969. It remains one of the clearest real-world answers to the question of whether people spend precious-metal money or hold onto it.
With Australia among the world’s biggest gold producers, the country’s relationship with the yellow metal isn’t just history. It’s part of the national economy, and a growing number of Australians are once again choosing to hold physical gold and silver as a store of value.
Hard Money Was Once Just Money
For much of history, in America and Australia alike, gold and silver weren’t collectibles or investment products. They were simply money. The 1795 eagle, the Sydney sovereign and the 1966 round fifty are all reminders of a time when the value of a coin was stamped into the metal itself.
Over to you, FirstGold readers: If Australia issued circulating gold and silver coins again, would you spend them, or would they go straight into your stack?
Disclaimer: This article is published by FirstGold for general information and educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, tax or legal advice, and it does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. Before making any decision to buy, sell or hold precious metals, you should consider whether the decision is appropriate for your circumstances and seek independent advice from a licensed financial adviser.
