This is the only 1933 Double Eagle monetized and issued by the United States Mint. It is the also the only example that the United States Government has ever authorized, or ever intends to authorize, for private ownership.

The two examples preserved in the Smithsonian Institution have never been monetized and are officially considered chattel by the government. Any additional examples that may exist are, similarly, property of the United States Government, illegal to own, and subject to seizure.

The Augustus Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle 1907-1933

What has justly been called "America's most beautiful coin design" was the result of a chance meeting between President Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens in November 1905. In conversation the two innovative men agreed that the design of then-current United States coins was lacking in artistic inspiration. Not long after, the President commissioned Saint-Gaudens to produce a coinage aesthetically worthy of the ancient Greeks.

Saint-Gaudens, America's greatest living sculptor, produced a series of designs that were immediately hailed by his President. The process of development involved numerous stages and changes. The original concept called for exceptionally high relief which, artistically, was exactly what the two men had been striving for; it was, however, thoroughly impractical for a circulating coinage. Sadly it was also the only design Saint-Gaudens saw before succumbing to cancer in August 1907.

A moderated high relief based on the original design, with the date expressed in Roman numerals, was attempted with modest success; but it too, proved unworkable in day-to-day transactions. In the end the need to produce a true circulating medium required simplicity - a lowered relief which required only a single blow from the coining press. The adaptation, by Charles Barber, translated a sculptured texture by utilizing graphic elements, thus metamorphosing contour into line. While the monumentality of the original concept could not be preserved. Saint Gaudens' brilliant composition, richly symbolic, was not altered, and it remains the most highly regarded of all United States coin designs.

The Unknown History of the 1933 Double Eagle

1933

It was a time of crisis for the United States. The Great Depression had spread its tendrils of woe throughout the industrialized world - engulfing all. It was the cruel payback for the glittering 1920's and their promise of two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot. As the Inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew near, observers saw a country poised on the brink of catastrophe or far-reaching change. Lowering on the economic horizon was the black cloud of an incipient banking crisis.

Prices were cheap - two-cents for a daily newspaper, twenty-cents for a pack of cigarettes or four hundred and forty-five dollars for a new Chevrolet coupe - but with a quarter of the nation's work force unemployed, even those who had money were not inclined to spend it. As the crisis of confidence grew, the only currency that seemed to be holding its own was gold.

Throughout the country banks were besieged by depositors withdrawing funds and the drain on the United States' gold supply was dire; frightened businesses and individuals were hoarding gold and sending vast sums abroad to help see them through until economic recovery. Overseas, equally desperate foreign governments looked to America as a source of gold, and bought up huge amounts of bullion for export. The country was literally hemorrhaging gold and the government realized that if the flow was not stanched the nation might never recover.

On March 6, 1933, just two days after his inauguration, President Roosevelt launched the famous "100 Days." With Presidential Proclamation 2039 he declared a Bank Holiday, closed the nation's banks, prohibited the payment or hoarding of gold in any form, and placed an embargo on the export of all gold. The steamship SS Paris, whose specially rebuilt hold was ready to receive nearly 14 tons of gold, sailed empty of fleeing bullion.

The public response to the presidential action was overwhelming. In New York City alone, on just the first day after the anti-hoarding policy was announced, long lines of law-abiding citizens formed outside the Federal Reserve Bank to return some $30 million in gold coin and gold certificates. An unnamed business firm surrendered $6 million in bullion, while a single businessman turned in $700,000. The response across the nation was equally robust and eventually some $300 million in gold coin and "yellow notes" was safely stored in the government's coffers.

The bank holiday was extended at the pleasure of the President and three days later, on March 9th, Congress passed a bill approving and confirming his actions. Over the next few months a series of Executive Orders were issued to tighten the rules and allow for specific exemptions (including coins of collector value). Ultimately on January 30, 1934 these individual regulations and proclamations were condensed, codified and passed into law by Congress as the Gold Reserve Act of 1934.

Philadelphia: The Last Gold Coin Shipment

The United States Mint at Philadelphia was the nation’s chief producer of gold coinage. On Sunday, March 5, 1933, in anticipation of the President's proclamation the next day, the employees of the vault, weigh and transfer rooms were hard at work. They were preparing what was to be the last shipment of gold coin to any Federal Reserve Bank or branch. This last movement was to ensure that there was an adequate gold supply on hand for payments already contracted. The shipment to Federal Reserve Banks and branches in Cleveland, Louisville, Baltimore. Richmond, Charlotte and the Treasury in Washington was fairly modest in size, carrying a face value of S12,250,000. Weighing about 19 tons, it contained Half Eagles, Eagles and Double Eagles. But none of these gold coins, the last to leave the United States Mint legally, were 1933 Double Eagles. The reason was simple: no 1933 Double Eagles had yet been made.

Philadelphia: Life at The Mint Goes On

On March 6th the Mint received a telegram from the Treasury Department forbidding the future payment of gold coin without license -- license which was never again issued. However, in the absence of instructions from Washington to stop gold coin production, the Mint continued its ordinary operations. As reported the day after the President’s first Proclamation in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "This is just a factory.” one official stated, "and we send out money only on orders from the Treasury Department. We have no orders with regard to the present situation."

Dies for the 1933 Double Eagles had already been engraved, bullion had been melted and assayed to .900 Fine as required by law, and strip had been rolled and was ready for stamping into planchets. Without orders to the contrary, the striking of Double Eagles would begin - and it did.

On March 15, 1933, the first 25,000 1933 Double Eagles were struck and delivered by the Coiner to the Cashier of the Mint. Two days later, Mint Director Robert J. Grant wrote to F.H. Jackson of Atlanta, Georgia, "Under regulations recently issued by the Treasury Department no gold or gold certificates may be paid out." An additional 25,000 were delivered to the Cashier five days later, and by the end of the month a total of 100,000 pieces had been struck.

Beginning on April 7, work continued and during the month an additional 200,000 were manufactured, being delivered to the Cashier in four equal groups of 50,000 each. Finally, during the month of May, 145,500 more were produced. The last delivery to the Mint Cashier was made on May 19, 1933; the year's production of gold coins was complete. And, although it was not known at the time, the grandest of all United States' coins - the Double Eagle - was extinct.

Philadelphia: 1933-1937. Death of the 1933 Double Eagle

The 1933 Double Eagles may have had all the obvious attributes of coins but they lacked the all important one that would give them life, so to speak. They lacked legal status as money. The Treasury, as required by law, had not authorized their release to the Federal Reserve Banks for circulation. They were nothing more than shiny gold disks.

Regardless, in accordance with a law nearly as old as the nation, one out of every thousand 1933 Double Eagles struck was randomly chosen for the annual meeting of the Assay Commission. The body had been established in 1792: its charge, based on the ancient Trial of the Pyx, was to test and verify the soundness of the nation's coinage.

By May 19, 1933, therefore, 446 examples had been reserved for counting, weighing and testing by the 1934 Assay Commission. These coins had been selected from two bags of 250 each. The first was from the delivery of March 15th; the second from the delivery of April 26th. These coins were segregated and kept in the Cashier's Vault, in the Pyx box, which needed two keys to open it.

Additionally, 20 coins ("specials" as they were known) were sent to the Bureau of the Mint in Washington D. C. Sent two at a time, on the date of each of the ten deliveries, they were duly receipted, and subsequently melted during testing. On June 27, 1933, 445,000 1933 Double Eagles were sealed in Mint Vault F, Cage 1 by the Cashier.

It was not until 1934 that the Commission sat and the samples were sent for testing. Accordingly, on February 2, 1934, the 34 coins remaining from the drawdown were segregated, and are believed to have been stored in the Cashier's vault. On February 14th and 15th the Annual Assay Commission met and carried out their assigned task. In the process nine coins were destroyed by testing. The remaining 437 coins were returned to the Mint Cashier's office on February 20, 1934.

On September 13, 1934 all United States Gold Coins remaining in the Mint were classified as uncurrent coin. Just under a month later, on October 9, 1934, two 1933 Double Eagles were forwarded by the Mint Cashier to the Smithsonian Institution for inclusion in the National Collection. From this point forth 445,469 1933 Double Eagles lay in storage.
Finally, the order came: between February 6 and March 18, 1937 all the 1933 Double Eagles were melted—at least in theory.
The vast majority in the Mint's Vault F; a small group, 469 pieces, were in the Mint Cashier's Vault. It was accessible to one man only. As of February 20, 1934, the Cashier's daily statement carried all but the twenty-nine pieces destroyed by Assay testing on its books.
On October 9, 1934 an additional two examples were sent to the Smithsonian by Cashier George McCann, and he was the only individual with access to the remaining coins, until they were destroyed.
Knowing that the 1933 Double Eagles had never been issued and were about to be destroyed must have made them particularly tempting. It also gave them considerable collector value. The mass movement of material to the refinery would have afforded McCann ample opportunity. He disguised his criminal act by switching common coins of no collector value, but identical weight, with the now valuable 1933 Double Eagles. When the final tally by weight was added up, the United States Mint had accounted for every single 1933 Double Eagle ever made--- or so they had thought.
In the middle of this turmoil at the U.S. Mint, on February 15, 1937, Israel Switt, a jeweler and "old gold” dealer, made the first sale of a 1933 Double Eagle to James G. Macallister for $500. This would prove to be just the first of many coins to pass through Switt into the hands of collectors—most of which were eventually seized or forfeited and ultimately melted.

1944: A King's Coin

February 25th 1944 was another long, bleak day during World War II in Washington D.C. At the United States Treasury work went on as scheduled. Hardly noticed among the officers and secretaries carrying out their appointed errands was a diplomatic officer from the Royal Legation of Egypt, making his way to the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury. His business was his King's, and in his pocket he carried a king's ransom, a 1933 Twenty-Dollar Gold piece. Two days earlier his King had purchased the coin from the flamboyant Texas numismatic entrepreneur, B. Max Mehl. He had been told it was of the highest rarity, one of just three examples he had ever handled.

King Farouk of Egypt was a twenty-four year old playboy who had come to the throne eight years earlier. A notorious spendthrift, he was touched by a collecting mania that encompassed such unimaginably diverse fields as stamps, Gallé glass, erotica, early razor blades and aspirin bottles, gold boxes, and Imperial Fabergé Easter Eggs to name but a few. He also collected coins with a gargantuan appetite.

Well-known to American coin dealers, he dealt with them through his Royal Legation. Purchases were sent on to the King in Koubbeh Palace in Cairo in the weekly diplomatic pouch. In this manner he had assembled a collection of astonishing size, richness and complexity.

Farouk’s Legation would have also been familiar with United States laws governing the export of Gold Coins, and thus the diplomat making his way through the Treasury Building would have been on what must have become a fairly regular errand.

The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 provided his guidance: among its many provisions, this act made it illegal to export gold in any form without express license from the Treasury. In this case, as enunciated in President Roosevelt's August 28, 1933 Executive Order 6260, was the mandate that the coin must have been of special value to a collector prior to April 5, 1933. Undoubtedly, dealer Mehl had assured Farouk's representatives that the 1933 Double Eagle fulfilled this requirement.

For a head of state such as Farouk, although the grant of a license was not guaranteed, it can be safely assumed that the process of application and decision was greatly accelerated. While the applicable regulations had established a "Gold Unit" in the Treasury Department to oversee such license requests, in this case it appears that the coin was sent, or taken, to the Bureau of the Mint - Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross its recipient sometime during that late February day.

Ross, the first woman to serve as Director of the Mint, had been chosen by Franklin Roosevelt, and by 1944 had already served her President for more than a decade. On February 25, 1944, Ross dictated a letter to the Curator of History at the United States National Museum, noting that the Royal Legation of Egypt, "desires to export from the continental United States," the 1933 Double Eagle. She asked, "Whether it was of recognized special value to collectors...immediately prior to December 28. 1933 [and] ...immediately prior to the issuance of the Executive order of April 5, 1933.''

That same day she entrusted the coin to her assistant, Mrs. W. D. Fales, who took the coin to the "Castle’,' the original Smithsonian Institution building. She showed the 1933 Double Eagle to the Curator of History, Theodore Belote, who had been appointed in 1924, and was responsible for the formal accounting of the newly received Mint Coin Collection. A collector at heart, his record keeping skills were somewhat haphazard, and his knowledge of the events leading up to the discontinuance of gold coinage was flawed.

Dr. Belote met with Mrs. Fales; after examining the coin and the letter, he dashed off an affirmative reply to both questions on the bottom of Mrs. Ross's letter, and returned the coin. Based on this opinion, four days later, on February 29, 1944, Secretary of the Treasury Henry C. Morgenthau Jr. issued export license TGL-11-170 to the Royal Legation of Egypt. Interestingly formal confirmation of Theodore Belote's somewhat hasty finding from the Associate Director of the Smithsonian, J. E. Graf, was not sent to Mrs. Ross until March 6 - after the license had already been approved. Mr. Fahim of the Royal Legation of Egypt retrieved King Farouk's 1933 Double Eagle and its export license from the Treasury on March 11th, when it was then secured in the diplomatic pouch for transport to Cairo and inclusion in the King's rapidly growing collection.

Almost as soon as it was determined that some 1933 Double Eagles had been stolen from the Mint, and that an erroneous export license had been granted to King Farouk, the Treasury Department began to think of ways to get the coin returned. As early as May 4, 1944, only six weeks into the Secret Service investigation, the Treasury's general counsel felt that, "it would be proper to attempt by diplomatic representations to have the coin returned to the United States." However, with a war raging overseas, the return of a single coin, from the ruler of a strategically important nation, may not have been seen to be of the highest importance. Nothing was done -- but the coin was not forgotten.

The end of the war in 1945 did not usher in the peace the world had hoped for. An iron curtain descended across Europe as the two great allies in the war against Nazism, America and the Soviet Union, squared off against one another in a game of international cold war. Egypt was vital to the west. A key piece on the global chessboard, it controlled the Suez Canal, and with it the Indian Ocean.

The Treasury Department, on September 14, 1949, drafted a letter for State Department review asking for the return of the Farouk 1933 Double Eagle. Acutely aware of the tense international climate, State "considered raising the question politically inadvisable." Again, the matter was dropped.

Three years later, everything changed. In 1952 King Farouk was ousted by a group of Colonels led by charismatic nationalist, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Their attitude to the outside world was suspicious and hostile. The revolutionary government's chief occupation was the reconstruction of Egypt and erasure of the country's colonial and royal past. One of their tasks was to sell off the fabulous riches which the fleeing King had left behind.

Sotheby's was chosen to conduct the sale after what essentially amounted to a year of negotiations conducted by Peter Wilson, and another year of cataloguing the collection in Cairo. Fred Baldwin of the esteemed London coin dealers of the same name, was asked to write the coin catalogue. It was a vast undertaking, some 8,500 gold coins alone. One of them was the 1933 Double Eagle. The sale was scheduled to begin on February 24, 1954.

In late 1953, the Mint found the coin listed in the catalogue as part of lot 185. It immediately informed the State Department and the news inspired a flu by of diplomatic cables. On January 27, 1954,"Washington wired Cairo with instructions that, "The Embassy should request that the coin be withheld from sale and that it be returned to the United States Department of Treasury."

A month later, the day before the sale was to begin Cairo wired back that President Naguib had "ordered the withdrawal [of the] coin from auction." The action was confirmed two days later in a cable from the American Consul:

"It has now been definitely established, on the basis of reports received from two reliable witnesses...The auctioneer, when putting up lot No. 185 on the auction block on February 24, 1954, is reported to have announced that the controversial twenty dollar gold piece, 1933 issue, was being withdrawn from the lot 'at the request of the American Government'. The balance of the lot was purchased by an American citizen who confirmed the withdrawal of the coin in question."

The buyer of record was David Spink, acting for American collectors the Honorable and Mrs. R. Henry Norweb. The price for the other 16 coins, even without the 1933 Double Eagle, was an enormous £2,800 ($8,467) - the highest price in the sale.

On March 31, 1954 the U.S. embassy reported that the return of the Farouk coin was "under consideration" by the Egyptian government. Nothing further was heard on the subject. The coin was never returned, and its whereabouts had been a mystery.

Back to the Future

On the afternoon of February 7, 1996 English coin dealer Stephen Fenton arrived in New York on a British Airways flight - with him was a 1933 Double Eagle.

The next morning Fenton met with American coin dealer Jasper Parrino at the Waldorf Astoria to negotiate the sale of the 1933 Double Eagle. Secret Service agents, made aware of the meeting through a confidential informant and wiretaps, arrested Fenton and Parrino, and seized the coin.

Over the next five years a lengthy series of legal bouts were fought. During the process, as described in the February 12, 2001 edition of Coin World, a deposition was given that may shed some light on the subsequent history of the celebrated Farouk coin.

The article reported that according to the sworn statement, between 1994 and 1995, English coin dealer André De Clermont and Stephen Fenton had bought numerous gold coins and patterns from an Egyptian whose father was said to have been a merchant to one of the colonels who had overthrown King Farouk in 1952. The colonel had been a coin collector who purchased coins at the Palace auction and privately after the sale. His family was now selling his collection. Both Englishmen stated that they were able to match coins exactly to the descriptions in Sotheby's Farouk catalogue. In late summer, 1995, Fenton was asked if he wanted to buy the Farouk 1933 Double Eagle. Fenton agreed and after some haggling, bought the coin with some other United States gold coins directly from the Egyptian seller. This was the coin seized from Stephen Fenton on that February morning.
Fortunately, just prior to the Stack’s/Sotheby’s July 2022 auction, the United States Government officially monetized and issued the Farouk-Weitzman 1933 Double Eagle, making it the only one certified for private ownership and the holy grail of United States numismatics.

Amidst swirling fables and rumors, the 1933 Double Eagle has become the stuff of legend; the focus of international numismatic intrigue, gossip and misunderstanding for nearly seventy years. There is no other coin that has been so shrouded by myth and secrecy; the stories of the 1804 Silver Dollar, 1913 Liberty Head Nickel and 1885 Trade Dollar pale in comparison. But its story is one which, until the decision of the United States Government to sell this single example, has been unknown to the public. Indeed, few outside the United States Secret Service and United States Mint were aware of the remarkable history of this fabulous glittering disk of gold - the 1933 Double Eagle - the Forbidden Fruit of American coins.

Provenance for the Farouk-Weitzman 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle

The Only 1933 Double Eagle "issued and monetized" by the United States Government for Private Ownership: Effectively Unique

• 1933, The United States Mint, Philadelphia
• March 20, 1934, Mint Cashier George A. McCann
• Beginning of February 1937, Israel Switt
• July 1, 1937, James G. Macallister, Sold for $500
• July 1937, B.L. Taylor
• Date Unknown, Max Berenstein
• Before February 1941, R.H. Smith
• 1941, Ira S. Reed
• Sometime in 1942, J.F. Bell
• February 23, 1944, B. Max Mehl (possibly via Ira Reed)
• February 23, 1944, King Farouk of Egypt (via Egyptian Legation), Sold for $1,575
• July 23, 1952, Republic of Egypt
• Scheduled for Auction on February 23, 1954, Consigned to Sotheby's, Lot withdrawn
• Anonymous Egyptian (via a Cairene jeweler)
• October 3, 1995, Stephen Fenton (via André de Clermont), Sold for $210,000
• January 25, 2001, United States Mint
• July 30, 2022, Stack’s/Sotheby’s sale, Lot, 1, Sold for $7,590,020
• Stuart Weitzman
• June 8, 2021, Sotheby’s Sale of the Three Treasures/Stuart Weitzman Collection, Lot 1, Sold for $18,872,250