Gold Indian & St. Gaudens Series

At the dawn of the 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt set out to transform American coinage, believing the nation’s coins should rival the artistic beauty of those produced by the ancient Greeks. Roosevelt enlisted renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to help lead this renaissance, resulting in an entirely new generation of U.S. gold coins. In 1907, Saint-Gaudens’ $10 Indian Head Eagle replaced the long-running Liberty Head design with a striking portrait of Liberty wearing a Native American feathered headdress. Following Saint-Gaudens’ death, his former student Bela Lyon Pratt continued the transformation with the $2.50 Indian Head Quarter Eagle and $5 Indian Head Half Eagle, introduced in 1908.

The $2.50 and $5 Indians are particularly distinctive because Pratt created their principal designs incuse—recessed below the surface of the coin rather than raised above it—a remarkable departure from traditional U.S. coinage and a design technique unique among American circulating coins. The $10 Eagle, meanwhile, paired Saint-Gaudens’ feathered Liberty with a majestic standing eagle on the reverse. Struck primarily during the final decades of circulating American gold coinage, these 90% gold issues were produced until the late 1920s and early 1930s, before the era of circulating U.S. gold came to an end in 1933. Today, the $2.50, $5 and $10 Indians are among the most recognizable coins of the pre-1933 era, prized for their innovative designs, historical significance and connection to one of the most ambitious artistic transformations in the history of American coinage.