10 Dollars - Charles III Liberty 1933

The Liberty design used here derives from the 1907 Saint-Gaudens double eagle — arguably the finest coin the United States Mint ever produced, commissioned by Theodore Roosevelt who considered contemporary American coinage an embarrassment compared to ancient Greek issues. At 0.5 g of .9999 gold, this Solomon Islands piece contains less than a sixty-fourth of the metal in the original, a disproportion that tells you everything about its purpose as a modern collectible rather than a circulating monetary instrument.