The 1933 Double Eagle, sold for a record shattering $ 18.9 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York, in June 2021, sold by shoe designer and collector, Stuart Weitzman.
The 1933 Double Eagle has a richly captivating history which encapsulates large swathes of United States history and has been the center of intrigue for more than 80 years. It is America's last gold coin struck for circulation, ending a tradition that began in 1795. Designed by the well known sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, its imagery of Liberty striding forward on the obverse, with the American eagle in flight on the reverse is lauded as America's most beautiful coin design. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt, as par of his effort to lift America's tattered economy out of the Great Depression took the country off the gold standard.
Struck but never issued for use, all 1933 Double Eagles were ordered to be destroyed with the exception of two examples sent to the Smithsonian Institution.
In 1937, in the same month the 1933 Double Eagles were melted. several examples appeared in the market, which ultimately led to a Secret Service investigation in 1944 that determined all 1933 Double Eagles in collectors' hands had been stolen from the United States Mint, and therefore illegal to own.
However, only weeks before the Secret Service investigation began in 1944, one of the 1933 Double Eagles was purchased and erroneously granted an export license to a representative of King Farouk).
It entered the famed coin collection of King Farouk of Egypt in 1944, sold by coin dealer B Max Mehl for $ 1,575, where it remained diplomatically untouched until 1954 when his collection was offered at auction by Sotheby's, acting on behalf of the new Republic of Egypt. Upon learning of its presence in the sale, the United States government successfully requested that the coin be withdrawn. But it was not returned as the coins whereabouts remained a mystery until 1996 when it was seized by the Secret Service in a sting operation at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Following a five year legal battle, which unearthed the improvidently issued export license, the case was settled and the government permitted this single 1933 Double Eagle to be privately owned.
In 2005, ten more 1933 Double Eagles surfaced in the family of one of the prime suspects in the 1944 Secret Service investigation and another legal battle ensued. More than a decade later, after a jury trial and appeals (to the Supreme Court) the 1933 Double Eagles were ruled the property of United States (another example was voluntarily surrendered following the litigation), and confirmed the government's statement in 2002 that Stuart Weitzman's (American shoe designer and collector), 1933 Double Eagle is the only example the United States Government has ever authorized, or ever intends to authorize, for private ownership.
Weitzman had purchased the coin at the Sotheby's/ Stack's auction in 2002 for $7,590,020. At the conclusion of the sale, in a historic moment, the Director of the United States Mint, signed a Certificate of Monetization that, in return for twenty dollars, authorized the issuance of this single example.
The 1933 Double Eagle, sold for a record shattering $ 18.9 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York, in June 2021, sold by shoe designer and collector, Stuart Weitzman.
What an enchanting story
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