When was the last time a country issued gold specie coins meant for circulation?
Note that I’m aware of American eagles, Canadian maple leafs, Krugerrands, and other gold bullion coins. This question is not about them.
I’m pretty sure that the American Double Eagle of 1933 was the one of the very last gold coins issued as currency.
1933 was the start of the gret depression and minting gold coins was probably a bad move for any government wanting to maintain its reserves.
I’m pretty sure Switzerland made some 20 franc gold coins as late as the 1940s which were meant to circulate. But in general, when the US stopped in 1933, that was the last of it. It was pretty pointless to make gold coins as money when the bullion value had exceeded the face value.
Wikipedia says 1935, while this site says 1930. OTOH, samclem is a real life expert and probably knows more than the internet. 
Don’t give me too much credit. 
While they did strike a coin after 1935(in 1945), it was dated 1935.
So when did other countries stop minting gold specie? Was it long before the US stopped or just a few years?
Also, could someone explain why the US made it illegal for its citizens to own gold in 1933. I once read an explanation but it didn’t make much sense (don’t remember what it was, either). I don’t think any other country enacted such a restriction, and they didn’t seem to have any problems because of it. Or did they?
At the time of the Great Depression, the US was still on the gold standard, and the Federal Reserve was required to maintain partial gold backing for loans to banks. As banks continued to fail, increasing demand for loans, consumers and investors increasingly hoarded both gold and currency, straining the ability of the Reserve to keep banks open.
Confiscating gold increased the Federal Reserve’s ability to stabilize banks, as well as maintaining the US government’s credit abroad. Ultimately, Roosevelt managed to take the country off the gold standard entirely. Unfortunately, acts of mismanagement by virtually every player in the world economy overwhelmed any good effect this might have had.
This question always arose when we got people coming into the coin shop and asking to buy gold coins, but they specified that they only wanted ones dated before 1933. They had heard that these couldn’t be confiscated by the government. This, of course, was just a selling tool by the companies advertising gold coins over the radio/newsletter/phone. Trying to sell them gold coins which had more profit built in, rather than just tied to bullion value.
The basic reason that Roosevelt called in the gold was that the world price of gold had risen to about $22-24/ounce US. London Fix Historical gold - result
This meant that a US $20 gold coin(which contained about .96 ounce of pure gold) was now worth about $22-24 on the world market. But, you could take your Federal Reserve Banknotes and/or gold certificate notes into any bank and trade them for US gold coins. Now imagine this on a world wide scale. France has one million dollars in US banknotes that it sends in for redemption and demands gold coins. France could take the coins and melt them, picking up a quick 10-20% on the transaction. So, Roosevelt decided to close the gold window and call them all in. The US government, at the end of the day, made a quick mega million on the world price of the gold. If Roosevelt hadn’t done it, the world would have redeemed all the banknotes for gold and made the profit.
As a side note, I think I got much of this info from reading a scholarly work by Milton Friedman. He also said, IIRC, that probably 90% of all the US gold coins at that date existed in the banks and the Federal Reserve. The public pretty much didn’t use as much gold coinage as they did paper.
It varied, country by country.
Most countries that still made gold coins for money in the 1920s either had a domestic supply of gold or were economic powers. Mexico made circulating gold coins until about 1931, but they were cutting back in quantities at that date.
Switzerland ceased in 1930, only to issue the 1935 20 franc.
Australia/Great Britain made them until about 1931.
Most of the gold issuing countries were devastated by WWI. They didn’t have the economic ability to issue legal tender gold coins.
samclem and Nametag, you both gave reasons for the US going off the gold standard. But the restriction on US citizens from owning gold seems to be a step beyond that. All other countries were off the gold standard, but AFAIK their citizens could still own gold. So what was this restriction meant to accomplish?
To anyone interested, if you’ve got access to a Webster’s Second Edition Unabridged Dictionary, it’s interesting to look at the “Coin” entry and see the accompanying color plate of world coins, which shows gold coinage from all the major powers, including even the USSR. Although by the time of most printings of this edition, gold coinage had already ended, it’s still a little startling to see the vast array of gold, and especially silver coins, all of which were worth something significant in their respective countries. A U.S. dollar was about the same size as a German 5-mark piece, or a British crown, or an Italian 10-lire piece. All were silver, and if you had a few of them in your hand, you could definitely afford a few haircuts, or rounds of drinks, or a very good meal or what have you.
How different from today, when a whole jarful of change may hardly amount to a couple of movie tickets.
Samclem: Maybe this should be a new GQ. Anyways, is there any reason for my mother -in-law to keep hoarding old silver Mexican Peso coins at this point?
If you mean the peso coins made from 1957-67, she’s hoarding coins with 10% silver content, worth about fifty cents ea. The silver content is so low, it isn’t worth melting them.
If she’s got the earlier ones, then they have more silver content. We get quite a few in the store, but with silver at $10 US, I"ve been melting them. When silver was $20 US back in March, it was a no-brainer. Melt.
Well, crap.
Bye, shiny!