Oh what could have been!
A week ago, Eric von Klinger had an article in Coin World on the Saint-Gaudens pattern coins, telling a lot about the design process for the double eagle. Well, Teddy Roosevelt fully intended Saint-Gaudens to redesign every circulating coin in the country, to rid the populace of the "atrocious hideousness" of the then current designs. The other day I was thinking, what if Saint-Gaudens hadn't died before he finished the reworking of American coinage under Roosevelt?