When there are displays of United States gold coins at the major coin shows, a piece that usually attracts considerable attention is the Stella, or $4 gold piece. In the 1950s, many collections were categorized by whether or not the owner had one of these rare little jewels. The story of this curious denomination began in the 1870s, although the background extends back to the dim mists of antiquity.
When coins were first struck in Asia Minor, about 600 B.C., the only precious metal readily available was electrum, a mixture of gold and silver. It was eventually realized that this combination could not be used for international trade, due to the difficulty of determining how much gold or silver was in a given coin. Within 50 years, electrum had been abandoned in favor of nearly pure gold and silver coins.
Although electrum was resurrected from time to time, governments for 25 centuries used primarily gold or silver for their precious metal coinage. Many nations, including the United States in 1792, tried to establish a bimetallic system of coinage, in which gold and silver had a fixed relationship, usually about 1 to 15. This meant, for example, that 15 ounces of silver were equivalent to one ounce of gold.
The massive discoveries of gold in California in 1848 upset the world ratio between gold and silver.
