1830 Templeton Reid Gold Pieces

About This Coin

The 1830 Templeton Reid pieces of Georgia: a quarter eagle (Kagin K-1), a five-dollar piece (K-2) and dated and undated ten-dollar pieces (K-3, K-4). Templeton Reid, a silversmith and machinist from Milledgeville, moved to Gainesville, Georgia, in 1830 to run an assay office and that year struck gold pieces of two and a half, five and ten dollars (Georgia historical marker, search). They read GEORGIA GOLD on one side and TEMPLETON REID ASSAYER with the value on the other (Smithsonian, search). A letter signed No Assayer, printed in a Georgia paper in August 1830, claimed that a tested ten-dollar piece was worth only about $9.38 (search). The Mint's assayers Eckfeldt and Du Bois wrote that Reid's coins had reached the Mint in quantity twice, the last time in 1831; they recorded a ten-dollar piece at 248 grains and 942 thousandths fine and a quarter eagle at 60.5 grains and 932 fine, and had not tested the five (quoted by Dickeson, 1859).