Union (United States coin)
proposed US$100 coin
The Union was a proposed $100 coin of the United States dollar. The US Mint canceled it before any pattern coins could be minted.
Since 1997 the Mint has released $100 denomination bullion coins, including the American Platinum Eagle coin, American Liberty high relief gold coin, and American Liberty 225th Anniversary gold coin.
History
In 1854, San Francisco businessmen sent a petition to Secretary of the Treasury James Guthrie for a $50 coin to be struck because no banknotes of any denomination circulated in California. Guthrie responded to the petition by introducing a measure to produce gold $50 and $100 coins, called half union and union, respectively. Although the measure passed the Senate on June 16, 1854, it was ultimately defeated in the House.
United States Mint engraver George T. Morgan made sketches of a possible design for a $100 coin in 1876, should the half union ever be a success. When the mint concluded that the half union (a gold coin weighing about 2.7 troy ounces or 83.6 grams) was infeasible, the idea of a union coin was discarded and forgotten.
Fantasy coins
Around 2005, Morgan's original sketches were discovered and published so the numismatic community could see what could have been. Private mints have since struck fantasy pieces of Morgan's design for collectors, in both silver and gold.
The public source identifies “Union (United States coin)” as proposed US$100 coin. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Union, United and States.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q65066477. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1997, 1854, 1876 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Union (United States coin)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.