Famous 1933 Double Eagle to cross the auction block in June

Please note, this is not the coin being auctioned.

The 1933 Double Eagle, a coin that is still illegal to own today! 

Except this one

This coin has made its way around the world over the years, and it has seen some interesting situations.

In 1933, the Philadelphia Mint released 445,500 total mintage of Double Eagles.  At the time, they were still legal to own.  Although the Double Eagle had not been in circulation for 20+ years, you could still go to the bank and request the coins.

On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States.  Elected right in the midst of the Great Depression, Roosevelt did much work to try to pull the American economy out of the financial crisis. 

Shortly after his inauguration, he passed Executive Order 6102 which required all American citizens to sell their gold to the U.S. Treasury.  The price of gold was then raised to $35 an ounce, in an attempt to counter deflation of the dollar, and to prevent the hoarding of gold so the money could move through the economy.

Those two of the 445,500 gold Double Eagle coins were sent to the Smithsonian, but the rest never made it out into the world.

Until 1937.

In 1937, a number of 1933 Double Eagle coins were sold, and in 1944 a Secret Service investigation concluded that they had been stolen from the Mint and all the coins were seized.

Except one.

One of the Double Eagles had been sold to King Farouk, of Egypt.  The coin was out of reach of the U.S. government and it stayed in King Farouk’s coin collection for a number of years, until 1996, when a British coin dealer named Stephen Fenton attempted to sell the coin privately to a dealer in the U.S.

The coin was confiscated by Federal agents, and for the next several years it sat in a vault in the World Trade center.  Finally, in 2001 the provenance of the coin was proven, as they had found the U.S. government’s own export license still on file. 

The coin was moved out of the World Trade Center shortly before the devastating attacks on September 11.

In 2002, the coin was sold for 7.59 million dollars--a world record at the time--to an unknown buyer, with the money being split between the dealer and the U.S. Mint department.  $20 was also paid to the U.S. Mint Director to monetize the coin, as a symbolic gesture. The coin also came with a document stating that it was the only 1933 Double Eagle legal for individuals to own.

Now that the coin has resurfaced and will be hitting the auction block next month, we do know the identity of the collector who purchased it back in 2002!  It turns out the buyer of the 1933 Double Eagle (and now seller) was Fashion designer Stuart Weitzman.

Weitzman will be selling the coin through Sotheby’s in New York, on June 8, 2021.

It’s anyone’s best guess how the auction will go, the coin is expected to fetch anywhere from $10 million to $15 million.