1933 Double Eagle: The World's Most Valuable Coin (Part 2)

 

[The second installment of “1933 Double Eagle” moves the story ahead to the Sotheby’s auction of the sole gold coin of that run that was legal tender—and we’ll see how much it sold for in 2002.  (Its latest valuation will be revealed in Part 3.  Wait for it!) 

[The story of the Double Eagle up to its resurfacing in 1996 and its sale at auction in 2002 is told in Part 1 of this series.  I recommend going back to 5 June for the beginning of this saga before delving into the continuation below.  (People and facts identified only sketchily here are given in more detail in Part 1.)

[Also below are snippets of the DE story in the ‘00 decade and into the 2010s, along with some of the repercussions of the coin’s resurfacing in 1996.  Read along—and remember, if you can, that this isn’t a Dashiell Hammett mystery!] 

“PAGING SAM SPADE:
A GOLD COIN FETCHES $7.6 MILLION AT AUCTION”
by Glenn Collins 

[Glenn Collins’s “Paging Sam Spade” ran in the New York Times of 31 July 2002 (Sec. B [“The Metro Section”]).  As you’ll note, Collins’s byline appears on the majority of the Times coverage of the return of the 1933 DE; there are two more of his reports below.]

The 1933 double eagle, a $20 gold piece with a mysterious history that involves a president, a king and a Secret Service sting operation, was auctioned last night [30 July 2002] for a record price for a coin, $7.59 million [$7.9 million in 2025], nearly double the previous record.

The anonymous buyer [identity revealed in Part 3], believed to be an individual collector who lives in the United States, made the winning bid in a fiercely contested nine-minute auction at Sotheby’s in Manhattan. Eight bidders were joined by 500 coin collectors and dealers in an auction-house audience seemingly devoid of celebrity bidders, while an additional 534 observers followed the bidding on eBay.

As auction houses prepare for their fall seasons in an uncertain economy, the sale price “suggests that the marketplace for important items is enormously strong,” said David Redden [1949-2024], a vice chairman at Sotheby’s, who was the auctioneer.

“This is an astonishing new record for a coin,” he said.

In an unprecedented move, the auction proceeds were split by the United States Mint and a London coin dealer, Stephen Fenton [b. ca. 1952], who had won that right in court after having been arrested by Secret Service agents for trying to sell the coin in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan in 1996.

Henrietta Holsman Fore [b. 1948], the director of the United States Mint, who witnessed the sale, said that “the moneys we receive will go toward helping to pay down the debt and to fight the war on terrorism.”

Mr. Fenton commented that the double eagle had been on “a long historic journey, with a very satisfying ending.” [The history of the 1933 double eagle didn’t actually end in 2002, as readers will see below and in Part 3.]

He added, “I am thrilled with the price.” The previous numismatic record holder was an 1804 United States silver dollar, which sold for $4.14 million in 1999 [$7.9 million in 2025].

Sotheby’s partner in the one-lot auction was Stack’s Rare Coins, with which it shared the customary 15 percent commission. “I have never seen as much interest in the sale of any coin in my 30 years in the business,” said Lawrence R. Stack [b. ca. 1952], the company’s managing director.

“This is the Mona Lisa of coins,” said Beth Deisher [b. 1946], editor of Coin World, the largest weekly coin publication, with a circulation of 85,000. “It is unique. Forbidden fruit.”

Collectors’ Web sites have seethed with speculation about the sale price, and enthusiasts even organized betting pools.

Last night, Mr. Redden took the podium for nine minutes before the gavel came down, recognizing bidders in the audience and on the telephone. The tension in the crowd was broken with a burst of applause after the $5 million mark, and a louder explosion at $6 million [$8.9 and10.7 million today].

The rumor in the crowd had been that “anything under $6 million would be a bargain,” said Ute Wartenberg [b. 1963], executive director of the American Numismatic Society in Manhattan. Most bidders dropped out after that price. The gavel sounded at $6.6 million [$11.7 million in 2025] after a Sotheby’s senior vice president, Selby Kiffer, made the final bid for the anonymous buyer on the telephone. The sale price of $6.6 million, when added to the commission, totaled $7.59 million [$13.5 million today].

The auction attendance was swelled by coin collectors who had gathered on the eve of the American Numismatic Association Convention [31 July-4 August 2002], the largest coin show of the year, expected to draw more than 10,000 people to the Marriott Marquis Hotel today. “So the auction was almost like the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the convention,” Mr. Stack said.

Ms. Fore of the mint said the high price for the coin was reached “because it is one of a kind, it is beautiful and it has a great story.”

The coin was the only 1933 double eagle that has ever been legally offered for sale, and its Maltese Falconesque history [see note in Part 1] only recently came to light, thanks to documents unearthed during the five-year legal battle over its ownership.

In 1792, it was deemed that all gold and silver United States coins would bear the depiction of an eagle [Coinage Act of April 2, 1792], but gold pieces were issued only after the [California] Gold Rush [1848-55] boom, in 1850. They were called double eagles because their face value was twice that of the original $10 gold piece [see note below].

Following the suggestion of President Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919], the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens [1848-1907] redesigned the coin in 1907 in high-relief, forever after giving the coins the designation “saints.”

But in 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt [1882-1945] took the United States off the gold standard, and ordered all the 1933 saints already manufactured destroyed, save for two reserved for the Smithsonian Institution. They were never declared legal currency.

But presumably after being stolen by a mint employee, nine double eagles surfaced during the mid-1940’s and 1950’s. They were seized by the Secret Service and melted down. But before these coins came to light, the royal legation of Egypt turned up with one at the Department of the Treasury, and somehow got an official to issue an export license for the coin to enhance the collection of King Farouk [1920-65; reigned: 1936-52]. By the time that blunder was discovered, the coin had left the United States.

In 1954, after the king was deposed [1952], his coins were sold at auction and the double eagle vanished. It went underground until it came to Mr. Fenton in 1995. His arrest in Manhattan, after attempting to sell the coin for $1.5 million [$3.1 million in 2025], led to a court battle over whether — thanks to the Treasury’s mistaken export permission in 1944 — the coin could be legally owned.

The double eagle came close to being melted down many times. The coin once again escaped destruction when it was moved from the Treasury Department vault in 7 World Trade Center eight months before the building collapsed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Ms. Deisher said the only comparable episode of coin frenzy in recent memory was the 1999 auction, for $4.14 million, of an 1804 silver dollar, the finest of only 15 known to exist. “But the double eagle is fascinating because of all the history and the intrigue,” Ms. Deisher said. “And it is unprecedented that the United States government is vouching for its authenticity.”

The mint studied the coin microscopically and matched it with one of the original dies used to strike it, and certified its genuineness.

The record price was seen as a gift by coin collectors. “Many people believe that our great coin rarities are vastly undervalued in comparison to old master paintings,” Ms. Deisher said.

In a ceremony after the sale, Ms. Fore of the mint declared the coin the only 1933 double eagle ever to be legally issued by the United States Government. This “monetized” the coin, making it legal tender. The buyer will receive a certificate of transfer stating just that, but only after paying the auction price and a fee of $20 for the face value of the coin.

That made the sale price actually $7,590,020.

*  *  *  *
“ON VIEW FOR PUBLIC COVETING”
by Glenn Collins 

[This Collins report from the middle of the decade appeared in the New York Times of 10 January 2005 (Sec. B [“The Metro Section”]).  “On View” is an account of the period the coin was displayed after the sale in 2002—though the identity of the owner, the person who bought it 30 months earlier, was still unknown.  (That identification is coming up in Part 3.)]

Out of the Vault, the World’s Most Expensive Coin Is Back on Display at the Federal Reserve

Until last week, the world’s most expensive coin was hidden in the world’s most valuable gold vault.

That is to say, in the brilliantly lighted blue-and-white stronghold of E Level, the deepest sanctuary of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the city’s bank of banks.

The coin was locked in a compartment at bedrock, 80 feet below Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan, surrounded by $90 billion worth of gold bars — some 550,000 of them — from 60 foreign institutions. That is more gold than at Fort Knox, and indeed, more than in any other repository.

This exceedingly rare United States $20 gold piece, the $7.59 million 1933 double eagle, will be placed on public display today in the ground-floor exhibition space of the Fed’s massive iron-barred neo-Florentine fortress of a building at 33 Liberty Street.

For more than a year the double eagle had been on view there in a free exhibition [16 January 2002-28 September 2012], “Drachmas, Doubloons and Dollars: The History of Money.” But in August the coin was spirited to the subbasement after a sudden Orange Alert from the Department of Homeland Security, which warned of “casing and surveillance activities” against major United States financial institutions.

For the double eagle’s return from the underworld, The New York Times was granted rare permission to enter the vault on a recent morning as the coin was transferred, after agreeing not to describe the bank’s security arrangements or print the names of its subterranean guardians.

Among those present were: three federal officers with automatic weapons. The archivist of the bank. A senior vice president of the bank. The head of the American Numismatic Society. The coin owner’s representative. The coin’s historian. A vault keeper. An auditor. A custodian. And yes, the two carpenters who actually did the work.

This, then, was the retinue monitoring the transport of the double eagle, a 34-millimeter-wide, 0.96-ounce stamped disk that is 90 percent gold and 10 percent copper. The length of the journey was but five floors: from the vault to the street-level exhibition space.

The coin-storage compartment — itself guarded by multiple locks — was adorned with a fragile paper seal, “just as I left it on Aug. 2,” said Rosemary Lazenby, the bank’s archivist. “Afterward, we kept it down here for the Republican convention [RNC, 30 August-2 September 2004, New York City], and then there was the election [2 November 2004].”

The doors swung open. The coin winked smartly in the light, along with 11 other rare specimens from the exhibition that had been mounted on a plexiglass display panel. Immediately there were inspections by Ms. Lazenby, the auditors and David Redden, a vice chairman of Sotheby’s, the auction house where the coin was sold for a record price on July 30, 2002 [see above and Part 1. He represents the coin’s still-anonymous owner whenever it is moved.

Also scrutinizing the treasures was Ute Wartenberg Kagan, executive director of the American Numismatic Society, which is the co-sponsor of the exhibition, along with the Federal Reserve.

Two carpenters, Cosimo Marolla [b. 1940] and Joseph Palus, lifted the coin into a shiny rubber-wheeled steel cart and began trundling it along the dented vault floor. (The dents are from gold bars that were inadvertently dropped by vault wranglers in the decades since the building was completed in 1924. These days, handlers wear steel-toed shoes plus $500 [ca. $820 today] magnesium shoe covers to protect feet from accidentally plummeting 27-pound ingots.)

Soon, then, members of the coin posse began watching the double eagle (and each other) as it was transported in the vault elevator up to the bank’s exhibition level.

There, Mr. Marolla and Mr. Palus buffed the inch-thick mounting panel with Precision Glass Cleaner, and hoisted the coins into the hyper-secure centerpiece vitrine in the exhibition room. The total value of the 12 rare coins within — estimated from $15 million to $25 million [$24.6-40.9 million today] — makes it, said Dr. Wartenberg Kagan, “without doubt the most valuable coin case in the world.”

An hour and a half after the vault seal was broken, the coin was reinstalled, to be displayed indefinitely. “It’s good to see it returned to its home,” Ms. Lazenby said of the double eagle, which is on long-term loan to the Fed. The $7.59 million price of the double eagle, which included a 15 percent commission to the auctioneers, “is the record for a United States coin,” said Beth Deisher, editor of Coin World, the largest weekly coin publication, in a telephone interview from her office in Ohio.

But the double eagle is on display not only because of its record price — twice the previous record for any coin — but also for its Maltese Falconesque history.

The coin’s story only recently came to light thanks to documents unearthed during a five-year legal battle over its ownership. At the suggestion of President Theodore Roosevelt, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens designed the coin, called a double eagle because its face value was twice that of a $10 gold piece bearing the depiction of an eagle. It was first minted in 1907.

[The Saint-Gaudens double eagle, of which the 1933 coinage was one exemplar, was first issued in 1907. An earlier double eagle design by James B. Longacre (1794-1869; portraitist and engraver), called the Liberty Head, however, was minted in 1849. The eagle, half eagle, and quarter eagle, with face values of $10, $5, and $2.50, were circulated from, respectively, 1795-1933, 1795-1929, and 1796-1929.

[For the sake of comparison, in 1933, though it was never released onto the market, the DE would have had the buying power of $492 today; the first double eagle would buy $831 worth of today’s goods. The other coins’ purchasing powers, in the years of their initial issuance, would currently be equivalent to $254, $127, and $61.]

When the United States came off the gold standard in 1933, all the double eagles manufactured that year were ordered destroyed [all other, previously legal tender gold coins had to be surrendered], save for two reserved for the Smithsonian Institution [on display at the National Museum of American History in the National Numismatic Collection]. None were declared legal currency.

But presumably after being stolen by a mint employee, one of the 1933 coins was believed to have been conveyed to the legendary coin collection of King Farouk of Egypt — legally, thanks to a United States Treasury export license that had been mistakenly granted. Ultimately a 1933 double eagle came into the possession of a London dealer, who was arrested by Secret Service agents in a sting operation while trying to sell the coin in Manhattan in 1996 [see above and Part 1].

A bitter court battle — over whether the coin could be legally owned, thanks to the Treasury’s export-license blunder — was at last resolved in a compromise when the mint declared the coin to be the only 1933 double eagle ever to be legally issued by the United States [25 January 2001]. The proceeds from its auction were then split between the dealer [Fenton] and the government.

There may be other 1933 double eagles that have never come to light, said David Tripp [b. 1951], a rare-coin consultant who wrote the original Sotheby’s exhibition catalogue as well as the definitive history of the coin, “Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle” (Free Press, 2004). But the one on display at the Federal Reserve “is the only one that is legal to own,” said Mr. Tripp, who was present at the bank during the unsealing.

Coin-collecting gossips have ceaselessly speculated about the identity of the double eagle owner, nicknamed Mr. Big by auction buffs.

“We know of no one in the coin world that the owner has talked with,” said Ms. Deisher. “We have put out teasers to the owner that we’d love to interview him or her, but we haven’t been contacted.”

By permitting the coin to be publicly displayed, Ms. Deisher said, “clearly the owner is generous and thoughtful, and has a sense of history and wants to share it with the public.” But it is also smart of the owner to entrust the coin’s security to the full might of the federal government, she said. The closest anyone has come to making off with gold from the New York Fed were the fictional villains in the 1995 action film “Die Hard With a Vengeance.” They were, naturally, foiled by Bruce Willis.

“If the double eagle is the Mona Lisa of coins,” Ms. Deisher added, “then the analogy is public display in the Louvre. That keeps the painting before the public eye, and helps give it the value that it has.”

*  *  *  *
“IN THIS CASE, ALL THAT GLITTERS IS GOLD.
JUST DON’T CALL THEM COINS”
by Glenn Collins 

[Collins’s follow-up report on the on-going tale of the 1933 Double Eagle coin ran in the New York Times on 12 August 2005 (Sec. B [“The Metro Section”]).  The article was also posted on the Times website as “They’re Gold, but Don’t Call Them Coins.”]

The United States Mint announced yesterday [11 August 2005] that it had recovered 10 more of its fabled 1933 double eagle $20 gold pieces and stored them in Fort Knox. But the family that sought to authenticate them at the Mint claims that the government had no right to take them.

Beth Deisher, the editor of Coin World, said that “it has been rumored for years that more of these coins were being held by private citizens.” The Mint’s announcement on its Web site caused a sensation in coin circles yesterday.

A 1933 double eagle that surfaced in 1996 is on exhibition at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at 33 Liberty Street in Manhattan. The Treasury declared it a coin as part of a legal settlement, and in 2002 it was sold at Sotheby’s for $7.59 million — the most ever publicly paid for a coin. The anonymous buyer has lent it for display.

“We are pleased that these 10 double eagles have been recovered,” David Lebryk, the Mint’s acting director, said in the statement. “These double eagles were never lawfully issued, but instead, were taken from the United States Mint at Philadelphia in an unlawful manner more than 70 years ago. They are, and always have been, public property belonging to the United States.”

The Mint said that the Treasury would not declare them legal coins, or auction them. They came to light last September when, the Mint said, the government was approached by a lawyer for the family of a Philadelphia jeweler.

The lawyer, Barry H. Berke of Manhattan, said the gold pieces were “voluntarily” revealed to the government by Joan Langbord [b. 1930; salesperson in her father’s jewelry store, I. Switt], the daughter of the jeweler, Israel Switt [1895-1990; Philadelphia jeweler and coin collector], who died in the early 1980’s [sic]. He added: “The Mint has responded to their good-faith efforts to amicably resolve any issues relating to their coins by seeking to keep the coins. The Langbord family fully expects that their coins will be returned to them so they can be freely traded like every other numismatic treasure with a colorful history. I expect that if they are not returned there will be litigation.”

When the United States came off the gold standard in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the destruction of all but two of the pieces — called double eagles because they were twice the value of a $10 eagle gold piece. But some left the Mint under murky circumstances that are still debated; any that have turned up have been claimed by the Secret Service. Mr. Berke said that the government had never established that the pieces were stolen.

In 2002, “the Mint guaranteed that no other double eagles would be monetized, and that none other could be sold,” said Ute Wartenberg Kagan, executive director of the American Numismatic Society, so this discovery would not lower the value of the Sotheby’s coin.

“This notoriety might tend to increase the value of the coin,” said David Tripp, the author of “Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle.”

Of the possibility of a lawsuit, Dr. Wartenberg Kagan said: “The family has to come up with an argument about why United States law doesn’t apply in this case, since the government holds that these coins cannot be legally owned.”

*  *  *  *
“FAMILY BATTLES U.S. OVER 10 COINS WORTH MILLIONS”
by John Schwartz 

[John Schwartz’s continuation of the Langdorne family’s double eagle story was reported in the New York Times of 9 July 2011 (Sec. A [news]), on a page entitled “National”).  It was also posted on the Times website on 8 July.]

PHILADELPHIA — Who owns 10 exceedingly rare American gold coins from 1933?

Is it the family of a local gold dealer who died 21 years ago? Or is it the United States government, which produced a half million of the coins before melting all of them — well, almost all of them — down?

Family members, who say they found the coins in a safe deposit box in 2003, argue they are the rightful owners of the exquisite “double eagle” $20 coins, each now worth millions of dollars. The government argues that the coins, never officially released, belong to the United States, and not the heirs of Israel Switt, the gold dealer.

And so to court.

In a case that began on Thursday [7 July 2011, jurors are getting an unusual lesson in Depression-era history, and will ultimately decide whether Mr. Switt was merely “colorful,” as a lawyer for the family described him, or a thief.

Each side explained in opening arguments that, for all of the history and complexities of 1930s Mint procedures and records to come, the case is quite simple. They disagreed, however, about what the simple point of the case was.

Assistant United States Attorney Jacqueline Romero [b. 1970/71], presenting the government’s case, told jurors, “You are going to hear a remarkable and intriguing story about gold coins that were stolen from the U.S. Mint.”

“Israel Switt was somehow involved” in the theft, she said, probably with the help of a corrupt cashier at the Philadelphia Mint. The government had linked Mr. Switt to every double eagle that had emerged over the decades, she said, including 10 tracked down in the 1940s and one sold with the agreement of the government by a dealer, Stephen Fenton, in 2002 for $7.6 million. That sale was based on a government mistake, she said; these coins would not get the same dispensation.

The government will prove, she pledged, that the heirs knew that the goods were not legitimately theirs, and so the jury should return the coins “to their rightful owner, the people of the United States of America.”

Barry Berke, a lawyer arguing on behalf of Mr. Switt’s heirs, the Langbord family, told the jury that the case was, simply, about power and government overreach. Washington should not be able to seize property from citizens “unless it can prove it is entitled to — and not just powerful enough to take it,” he said.

He called the government’s case an attempt to “rewrite history,” and promised to present alternate explanations for treasured coins coming legitimately into the Langbords’ hands: the mint commonly exchanged coins for gold, he said, and the cashier of the mint kept an “open bag” of 1933 double eagles near his desk.

How did the coins get out? Gloriously designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the 1933 double eagles were never officially distributed. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, trying to stop a bank panic and to stem hoarding, issued an executive order that made owning large amounts of gold bullion and coins illegal. So while nearly a half million were made, all but two, sent to the Smithsonian, were supposed to have been reduced to bullion.

But in 2004, Joan Langbord, Mr. Switt’s daughter, and her sons [Roy (b. ca. 1952), an entertainment lawyer in New York City, and David Langbord (1955-2023), owner of Computer Discounters in Virginia Beach, Virginia] contacted the United States Mint to say they had discovered the 10 coins tucked away in a safe deposit box, within a folded Wanamaker’s department store bag, and asked for help in authenticating them. Instead, the government seized the double eagles — an eagle was a $10 piece, a half eagle a $5 — saying that since they had never been circulated, they must have been stolen. The Langbords sued to get them back.

In 2009, Judge Legrome D. Davis [b. 1952] of Federal District Court, said that the government could not simply assume the coins were government property, and would have the burden of proving the facts in court. While the government has the burden of proof, this is not a criminal case in which guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. It must convince jurors only that a preponderance of the evidence supports its case.

In a tough pair of detailed orders issued just before trial, Judge Davis stated flatly that some of the evidence could allow jurors to infer that the coins were stolen and that the family knew it and concealed them. He noted somewhat acerbically in a footnote that the safe deposit box in which Ms. Langbord “claims to have discovered” the coins had been opened by her in 2002, “the day before the Fenton coin was sold at auction.” [The 2002 auction was held on 30 July; see Part 1.]

Even if the jury decides in favor of the Langbords, Judge Davis could still declare the government the rightful owner. That possibility worries coin collectors, said Armen Vartian, a lawyer who filed briefs in the case on behalf of the Professional Numismatics Guild [association of rare coin dealers]. “The government cannot just go around saying, ‘You have this. We think it’s ours. Give it back,’” he said. Having looked at the evidence against the Langbords, he said, “At best, it’s inconclusive,” and added, “You would think that the government has better things to do.”

In the courtroom, jury selection took much of the first day. The process, as usual, was grindingly slow, but had its moments. Judge Davis, a large man with a sonorous voice who tips back so far in his chair that sometimes only his head is visible over the desk, asked a potential juror whether the fact that her husband collected coins would influence her. Did she share his hobby?

“I don’t collect coins,” she said. “I spend them.”

She was seated.

[John Schwartz is a former science writer for the New York Times, who focused on climate change.  In two decades at the Times, beginning in 2000, Schwartz covered law, technology, the space program, infrastructure, and more.  His work also appeared occasionally in the Times Book Review, “Science Times,” and the “Arts” section.  He also wrote a humor column for the business section’s mutual funds quarterly.

 [With Part 2 of “1933 Double Eagle: The World’s Most Valuable Coin,” we’ve taken the saga into the 21st century’s second decade.  (It started in the fourth decade of the 20th century, though I only picked it up in 2002.)  Part 3, which will be out on Wednesday, 11 June, will pick up a couple of years later and move into the third decade.  Please log onto Rick On Theater then and see where the DE’s journey ends . . . for now.]

1933 Double Eagle: The World's Most Valuable Coin (Part 1)

 

[The story that begins below (and will continue on Sunday) is of no particular consequence—unless, of course, you are a numismatist—a coin collector.  It’s all about what may be the rarest coin in the world, an American Double Eagle 20-dollar gold piece minted in Philadelphia in 1933.

[But it does hold some interest as a tale, because, as New York Times reporter Glenn Collins says below, it has elements of The Maltese Falcon and The Lord of the Rings.  I think you’ll enjoy it—even if you never collected old pennies.]

“THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO SELL
THE FAMED 1933 DOUBLE EAGLE,
THE MOST VALUABLE GOLD COIN IN THE WORLD 

[Below is a United States Mint press release of 7 February 2002 (https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/20020207-the-united-states-government-to-sell-the-famed-1933-double-eagle-the-most-valuable-gold-coin-in-the-world) announcing the auction of the only 1933 Double Eagle coin that’s legal tender. It traveled a “fur piece” to get to this sale and passed through many hands, some honest, some crooked.]

United States Mint Selects Sotheby’s and Stack’s to Sell Renowned Coin on July 30

New York, NY — On July 30, 2002 Sotheby’s and Stack’s will offer for sale for the first time, on the behalf of the United States Government, the most valuable gold coin in the world, the fabled and elusive 1933 Double Eagle twenty dollar gold coin.

[Sotheby’s is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. The renowned auction house was established in London in 1744 by Samuel Baker (1722?-79), a bookseller, under his own name. The name Sotheby appeared in the company’s title, Leigh and Sotheby, in 1767; it became simply Sotheby’s in 2006.

[Founded in 1933 as Stack’s Rare Coins, the numismatic company Stack’s Bowers Galleries, renamed in 2011 when Stack’s merged with Bowers and Merena Auctions, is America’s oldest rare coin auctioneer and dealership. Specializing in U.S., world, and ancient coins, tokens, medals, and currency, its first auction occurred in 1935.]

This is the first time that the United States Government has authorized private ownership of a 1933 Double Eagle.

After it was struck in 1933, President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt [1882-1945; 32nd President of the United States: 1933-45], in one of his first acts as President, took the United States off the gold standard [20 April 1933] in an effort to help the struggling American economy out of the Great Depression [1929-39]. All of the 1933 Double Eagles were ordered destroyed, but ten specimens are known to have escaped into private hands. However, as they had never been of[f]icially “issued” as United States coinage, they cannot be legally owned.

As a result, nine of the ten specimens were seized by, or turned in to, the United States Secret Service in the 1940s and 50s and were subsequently destroyed.

The remaining 1933 Double Eagle, which will be offered, surfaced in 1996 and was seized by the United States Secret Service [8 February 1996]. The coin was returned to the United States Mint as a result of the Department of Justice’s settlement of a forfeiture action [April 1996], and in that landmark legal settlement, this one coin became the only 1933 Double Eagle now or ever authorized for private ownership by the United States Government.

[The U.S. Secret Service was established in 1865 initially to investigate the counterfeiting of U.S. currency. (The agency has protected U.S. presidents and presidential candidates since 1901, after the assassination of President William McKinley [1843-1901; 25th President of the United States: 1897-1901].) Until 2003, the Service was part of the Department of the Treasury; from that year till now, it’s been part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.]

The coin will be sold in a single lot auction at Sotheby’s York Avenue premises in New York on July 30, 2002 [auction results will be in an upcoming post], and carries an estimate of $4/6 million [$7.1/10.7 million in 2025].

“This storied coin has been the center of international numismatic intrigue for more than seventy years, said Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore [b. 1948; 37th Director of the United States Mint: 2001-05]. “The Mint has certified the authenticity of this legendary 1933 Double Eagle. We will officially transfer full, legal ownership of the coin to the highest bidder at this historic sale.”

“We expect that this coin may become the most valuable coin in the world and one of the most sought—after rarities in history” said David Pickens [b. 1946], Associate Director [for Numismatics], United States Mint.

David Redden [1949-2024; Sotheby’s auctioneer: 1974-2016], Vice Chairman of Sotheby’s [2000-16], and Lawrence R. Stack [b. ca. 1952], Managing Director of Stack’s, said, “The story of this coin is one of the great numismatic mysteries of all time whose final chapter will be written with this auction. Currently held at United States Gold Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, the coin has an intriguing history which includes seizure by the United States Government, a five-year trial with a landmark resolution and a possible connection to a royal Egyptian Collection dispersed in the 1950s. It is an enormous privilege to be asked by the United States Government to undertake the sale of the ‘Holy Grail’ of the coin collecting world.”

1933 Double Eagles

The twenty dollar gold coin, known as a Double Eagle, was a child of the California Gold Rush [1848-55], and the massive shipments of ore sent back East. The first Double Eagles were issued to the public in 1850. In 1907, at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919; 26th President of the United States: 1901-09], the denomination was radically redesigned by famed American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens [1848-1907; sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation (ca. 1885-1930)]. These were struck until 1933 when production of the Double Eagle was discontinued along with all other United States gold coins as a result of Executive Order 6260 issued by President Franklin Roosevelt which, in an effort to aid the struggling American economy, prohibited banks from paying out gold.

According to the United States Government, any Double Eagle struck in 1933 could not be legally owned, because none were officially released to the public. In early 1944, prior to the government’s discovery of the missing 1933 Double Eagles, the Royal Legation of Egypt presented a 1933 Twenty Dollar Double Eagle to the Treasury Department, seeking a license to export the coin to Egypt for King Farouk’s [Farouk I; 1920-65; penultimate King of Egypt and the Sudan: 1936-52] collection. The export license was required for virtually all gold coins under the extensive gold restrictions [Executive Order 6102, known as the Gold Confiscation Order] that had been in effect since March of 1933. Not yet recognizing the significance of an unissued 1933 coin, the Department of the Treasury inadvertently issued the export license and the King Farouk specimen was exported out of the United States.

[Gold restrictions in effect in the U.S. starting in March 1933:

•  6 March 1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation 2039 which declared a nationwide “bank holiday” (the closure of banks to curtail or prevent a bank run) and, shortly after, used the authority of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, signed on 9 March, to restrict gold movements. One of the act’s key provisions, this gave the government power to control gold exports and prohibit financial institutions from converting currency and deposits into gold coins and ingots.

•  5 April 1933: President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 (known as the Gold Confiscation Order), explicitly forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates.

•  Mandatory surrender: The order required most Americans to turn in their gold holdings to the Federal Reserve by 1 May 1933, in exchange for paper currency at a fixed rate of $20.67 per ounce.

[The private ownership of gold was legalized again in the United States in 1974 (Pub. L. 93–373, known as the Gold Ownership Act, which went into effect 31 December 1974).]

Within weeks Government officials came to recognize the significance of the 1933 Double Eagle, and discovered the existence of nine other 1933 Double Eagles that illegally left the Mint without ever being issued. Over the next ten years, these nine 1933 Double Eagles were seized or voluntarily turned in to the Department of the Treasury, and were subsequently destroyed.

Possible King Farouk Provenance

In 1954, a 1933 Double Eagle appeared at auction in Cairo, Egypt; Sotheby’s, acting on behalf of the new Republic of Egypt, was selling the astonishing collections assembled by the deposed King Farouk. [Farouk was overthrown in the Egyptian revolution of 1952 at the end of July, under the leadership of General Mohamed Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser.] King Farouk was one of the greatest coin collectors of all time, though it was not until this auction that the world learned of his remarkable achievement — the collection comprised more than 8,500 gold coins and the sale itself took nine days. Lot 185 in that auction contained a 1933 Double Eagle. Learning of the offering, the United States Treasury successfully requested that the coin be withdrawn from the sale. After this, the whereabouts of the coin remained a mystery for nearly half a century. It has been suggested, in sworn depositions, that the present coin is the King Farouk coin, and there is significant evidence that it was part of the famed collection, including the fact that no other 1933 Double Eagle is known to exist or has ever been identified.

The location of the present coin, since its minting in 1933, had been a mystery until 1996 when it was seized at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York as respected and leading British coin dealer, Stephen Fenton [b. ca. 1952], attempted to sell it to Secret Service agents who were posing as coin collectors. The legal proceedings which lasted five years, ultimately resulting in a ground–breaking settlement which specifically allows this particular Double Eagle, nearly seventy years after its production, to be the only 1933 Double Eagle permitted to be privately owned [see the New York Times article below].

The Auction

Part of the intrigue surrounding the coin is the fact that it has existed in limbo for nearly seventy years. In the eyes of the United States Treasury, up until now, the coin has had no monetary value and its possession could result in a possible imprisonment. Associate Director Pickens confirmed, “upon auction the coin will be officially released for private ownership and it will become official U.S. coinage. At the sale, the final purchase price will be increased by $20, which will go to the United States Treasury General Fund. In other words, the United States Government will be “issuing” one 1933 Double Eagle for the first (and only) time at this historic sale.”

The new owner of the coin will be given an official Certificate of Transfer that makes the coin legal to own. Given the complex issues surrounding the elusive 1933 Double Eagle, this Certificate of Transfer, will be itself historically significant.

Sotheby’s and Stack’s

This sale represents a partnership of Sotheby’s, whose history of coin auctions stretches back to 1755, and Stack’s, an American numismatic firm whose first coin sale was held in 1935. Most recently, in October 2001, Sotheby’s and Stack’s worked together to sell the fabled Dallas Bank Collection for $7.8 million [worth $12.8 million today].

[The Dallas Bank Collection was an auction in New York City on 29 and 30 October 2001 of United States gold coins collected by the late H. Jeff Browning (1933-78).]

[This press release from the U.S. Mint is identical in terms of text to that issued on the same date by Sotheby’s, with a few differences in format.  I have a print-out of the Sotheby’s PR, which I was going to post, but it’s no longer online.]

*  *  *  *
“UNIQUE COIN, AND UNIQUE MYSTERY”
by Glenn Collins 

[Glenn Collins’s preview of the upcoming auction ran in the New York Times on 19 April 2002 (Sec. B [“The Metro Section”]).  His was a somewhat more fanciful telling than that of the U.S. Mint, but I guess that’s to be expected.]

Back From a King’s Vault, the Lone 1933 Double Eagle

It is a $20 gold piece from 1933 that was ordered destroyed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt [1882-1945]. Stolen from the United States Mint, it was exported for a king after the government committed the bumble of all bumbles, was contested in an interminable legal donnybrook, and even came close to being lost in the destruction of the World Trade Center.

It is the 1933 double eagle, and it could fetch a record price for any coin when it is auctioned in July [2002 – the 30th, at Sotheby’s in Manhattan] for an estimated $4 million to $6 million [$7.1-10.7 million today].

“This is a wondrous story. It’s historic and mysterious in lots of ways,” said David Pickens [b. 1946], associate director [for numismatics] of the United States Mint, which currently has possession of the double eagle.

Today [Friday, 19 April 2002] at 10 a.m., when the doors open at Sotheby’s in Manhattan for the first public viewing [19 April; 6-9, 13-16, and 20-24 May] of the only such 1933 coin that has ever legally been offered for sale, visitors will see a 34-millimeter-wide, 0.96-ounce stamped disk that is 90 percent gold and 10 percent copper. Its metallic worth is only about $270 [about $480 today], and it has come close to being destroyed many times.

“This coin has had nine lives,” said David Redden [1949-2024], a vice chairman at Sotheby’s, who will serve as the auctioneer.

The Dashiell Hammett-like chronicle of the coin — a composite of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Maltese Falcon” — has only recently come to light, thanks to several decades’ worth of documents that were unearthed during a five-year legal battle over its ownership.

[Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was the popular writer of detective novels and short stories, many of which were turned into equally popular films. He created the private eye Sam Spade, best known from the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon, filmed in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) starring as the detective in an iconic performance.  Both the novel and movie were renowned for the many twists, turns, and surprises of the mystery’s plot.

[The Lord of the Rings, also known as The Ring Trilogy, is an epic fantasy novel in three volumes written by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973). Published in 1954 and 1955, the trilogy is a multifarious mix of diverse influences, including religion, mythology, and even philology all worked into the epic in an intricately detailed fantasy world of strange and fantastic characters. The saga takes almost two decades to unfold. Among other adaptations, the books were made into a successful trio of live action films (2001, 2002, 2003) by New Zealander Peter Jackson (b. 1961).]

The 1933 double eagle “has the potential,” Mr. Pickens said, “of being the most valuable coin ever struck.” But only if it sells for more than $4.14 million [$7.9 million in 2025] — the price paid for an 1804 United States silver dollar in 1999, the most ever paid for a coin at auction.

No one knows if it will fetch that much, “but the coin market has been strong, which tends to be the case when the stock market is down,” said Dr. Ute Wartenberg [b. 1963], executive director of the American Numismatic Society [1999-2019; elected president in 2020] in Manhattan, which is not involved in the sale.

“It is a fabled coin,” she said of the 1933 double eagle. Its rarity, she said, is a function of the highly unusual circumstances of its sale, which grew out of the coin’s highly unusual history: it was originally pilfered from the Treasury and never certified as legal currency.

As part of an out-of-court settlement, the Mint has agreed to declare the coin the only 1933 double eagle ever to be legally issued by the United States government [USA v. 1933 Double Eagle, settlement, 25 January 2001]. This will “monetize” the coin (make it legal tender) when the winning collector pays not just the auction price but also “a fee of $20 for the face value of the coin,” said Mr. Pickens of the Mint.

To collectors, therefore, this 1933 double eagle will be distinct from the only two other 1933 double eagles believed to be in existence, at the Smithsonian Institution. They are unmonetized specimens that are officially deemed “worthless chattel” in government documents.

This could be crucial to collectors because “they may spend a lot on what they think is an exclusive coin,” Dr. Wartenberg said, “only to learn later that others have been discovered, lowering the value.

“But the Mint is saying this coin is the only one that it is legal to own. That means, if another one turns up in an attic, the Secret Service will seize it.”

Further endorsing the coin’s value is the Mint itself. It has studied the coin microscopically and matched it with one of the original dies used to strike it, “and is certifying that this coin is genuine,” Mr. Pickens said. “It’s not a counterfeit.”

The tale began in 1792, when the fledgling United States government deemed [Coinage Act of April 2, 1792] that all gold and silver coins would bear the depiction of an eagle (although Benjamin Franklin [1706-90; American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher] favored a turkey). For 58 subsequent years the highest-denomination coin was the $10 gold piece. Following the Gold Rush boom, $20 gold pieces were issued in 1850. They were called double eagles because they were worth double the face value of the original $10 gold piece.

In 1907, the double eagle was radically redesigned by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens [1848-1907], thanks to President Theodore Roosevelt’s [1858-1919] desire for a high-relief American coin that would be as beautiful as those of the ancient Greeks.

[In numismatics, “high relief” on a coin refers to a specialized striking process where the design elements are raised significantly above the coin's surface, creating a three-dimensional, sculptural effect. This differs from standard coins, which have designs that are less raised. High relief coins are known for their intricate detail and depth, and they are often more valuable and collectible due to their unique features.]

When in 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard by issuing Executive Order 6260 [5 April], the year’s production of double eagles was ordered destroyed, save for two that were reserved for the Smithsonian. All the rest were thought to have been melted down.

Then, echoing “The Fellowship of the Ring,” with its “nine rings to bind them,” nine double eagles mysteriously surfaced during the mid-1940’s and 1950’s. Through the years, they were seized by the United States Secret Service from those who tried to unload them; ultimately all nine were melted down.

But in early 1944, according to government documents, before the discovery of any missing 1933 coins, the royal legation of Egypt turned up with one; it sought a license to export it to enhance the collection of King Farouk [1920-65]. It is believed that the Department of the Treasury issued the license inadvertently. “There is no evidence that money changed hands,” Mr. Redden said. The approval was expedited, he said, because it was intended for a head of state.

Only weeks later, the export-license faux pas was discovered. By then, the coin had left the country by diplomatic pouch.

In 1954, after King Farouk was deposed [1952], his collections were sold at auction on behalf of the new Republic of Egypt. When the United States government learned that Lot 185 contained a 1933 double eagle, the Treasury requested that the coin be removed from the auction, and it was, but it vanished.

It is this coin, Mr. Redden said, that Sotheby’s believes has survived. After the Farouk auction, the coin is thought to have stayed in Egypt until it came into the hands of a London dealer, Stephen Fenton, in 1995.

A year later, Mr. Fenton tried to sell the coin for $1.6 million [$3.3 million today] in Manhattan in a room at the Waldorf-Astoria. United States Treasury agents posing as collectors seized the coin.

In the legal battle for ownership that ensued, Mr. Fenton’s lawyers argued that the United States government had given written permission for the coin to enter a private collection. “From a legal standpoint, things were muddy enough for there to be a settlement,” Mr. Redden said.

Mr. Pickens cautioned that although the Mint can certify the coin’s authenticity, it cannot certify any of the other milestones in its trajectory. “But we understand that there are significant historic documents that would lead it to conform” with the Sotheby’s outline of its history, he said.

“There are still many mysteries,” said David E. Tripp [b. 1951], a special consultant to Sotheby’s who once ran its coin department. He was given access to court documents, legal briefs and internal Treasury Department memorandums to write the exhibition catalog for Sotheby’s.

Government records point to a real-life possible culprit: George A. McCann, who ultimately became the cashier of the Mint. He is believed to be the only employee who had physical access to the 1933 double eagles that were purloined.

Mr. McCann was never charged in the disappearance of the double eagles because of the statute of limitations, but he did serve a year in prison for having embezzled unrelated silver coinage.

The proceeds from the Sotheby’s sale will be divided equally between the United States Government and Mr. Fenton. The portion going to the Mint will be put “in the general fund of the Treasury Department to reduce the national debt,” Mr. Pickens said.

During the long years of legal wrangling [1996-2001], the coin resided in a Treasury Department vault in 7 World Trade Center. It was only removed to the bullion vaults at Fort Knox, Ky., when the court case was settled, in late January 2001, less than eight months before 7 World Trade Center was destroyed following the terrorist attack.

The coin’s current home is the United States Mint and bullion depository at West Point, N.Y., and it was delivered to Sotheby’s on Tuesday [16 April 2002] by Robert A. Beck, chief of the United States Mint police at West Point, and Detective Ruby Johnson.

The coin’s condition is exquisite, though not utterly perfect since it was a production coin that, after its manufacture, jostled with 250 other double eagles in a cloth bag and picked up some microscopic scratches.

“But its condition is less significant when it is the only coin of its kind,” Mr. Redden said.

Sotheby’s, which has been auctioning coins since the 18th century, is, unsurprisingly, hoping to cultivate the image of the coin as a numismatic sensation. Its auction partner, which will share the customary 15 percent buyer’s premium, is Stack’s Rare Coins, which is spearheading the marketing effort among coin collectors.

To maximize the pool of buyers, the Mint and Sotheby’s are putting the coin on view today in Sotheby’s 10th floor exhibition galleries.

The coin will be shown during Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist art in May, then at the Long Beach Coin and Collectibles Show in California, then in a gallery at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Lower Manhattan. Finally, it will be put on view at Sotheby’s before its July 30 sale.

Why then? It coincides with the American Numismatic Convention [31 July-4 August 2002], the largest coin show of the year, which will attract more than 20,000 coin collectors to New York City. “All of them may not necessarily be able to afford it,” Mr. Redden said.

And will the double eagle sell at its estimated price? “All you need,” said Mr. Pickens of the Mint, “is two people who want it.”

[Glenn Collins (b. ca. 1945), a prolific and longtime reporter for the New York Times from 1970 till about 2020 (his byline seems to have disappeared that year, but I can’t confirm that he retired after 50 years), and covered a lot of different fields from the arts—he was the Times’s only circus reporter for most of his career at the paper—restaurants, business, and “lifestyles.”

[Collins, who’d be about 80 now, also served as an editor (1970-80) and columnist (“Endpaper,” 1973-77) at the New York Times Magazine.  Since the Times, he seems to have continued writing for other publications, including online outlets.  Before the Times, Collins was an editor at the Columbia University Forum, a reporter for the Paterson, New Jersey, Morning Call, and a writer for the Associated Press.

[A lengthy account of the whole story of the Double Eagles, first struck in 1849, is online in “The Ultimate Coin: The 1933 Double Eagle” on the Sotheby’s website.  It’s loaded with additional details, so it’s very long (with footnotes).  You’ll need to scroll down a bit to find the story.

[“1933 Double Eagle: The World’s Most Valuable Coin” will continue on Sunday, 8 June, with Part 2.  The story of the unique coin has a little more to reveal, especially the results of the Sotheby’s auction.  I hope you will return to Rick On Theater for the rest of the tale.]