- Title: USA: RARE DOUBLE EAGLE GOLD COIN SET TO GO UNDER HAMMER AT SOTHEBY'S
- Date: 20th April 2002
- Summary: (W1) NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (APRIL 19, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. SOTHEBY'S AUCTION HOUSE 2. VARIOUS SECURITY 3. 1933 DOUBLE EAGLE COIN 4. DAVID REDDEN, VICE CHAIRMAN OF SOTHEBY'S DISPLAYS COIN 5. SOUNDBITE (English) DAVID PICKENS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF US MINT SAYING: "It is a coin that had been struck in Philadelphia in 1933. And, this is the only coin that we are ever going to sell to the private sector. It will be the only 1933 double Eagle that can be held privately." 6. COIN 7. SOUNDBITE (English) DAVID REDDEN, VICE CHAIRMAN OF SOTHEBY'S SAYING: "The buyer has to pay not only what it sells for at the auction but an extra twenty dollars back to the US Government to make it into real currency. And that sort of, of course makes it so exciting. Because simply as a gold disc it has no interest. It has to be a real coin to be worth the millions of dollars that this coin is surely going to bring. And then of course someone could go out and buy twenty dollars worth of goods with it. I don't think they are going to do that though." 8. COIN IN DISPLAY CASE 9. SOUNDBITE (English) REDDEN SAYING: "Are there any other coins out there? .. It's possible, but if anyone surfaces with one of those coins the Secret Service will go after them instantly and that coin will be melted down." 10. VARIOUS PRESS SHOOTING COIN IN DISPLAY CASE WITH SECURITY 11. COIN Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 5th May 2002 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- City:
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVACBT2AEJO3XF3IQU3DHOVE7ZH7
- Story Text: The public got a rare glimpse of a 1933 Double Eagle
Gold Coin, billed by Sotheby's as the 'most valuable gold coin
in the world'. The auction house will put the coin up for
auction in July.
Sometimes all that glitters really is gold. Sotheby's
on Friday (April 19) began displaying a 1933 Double Eagle $20
gold coin, the only one the United States will permit to be
privately owned. The auction house said the Double Eagle could
fetch as much as $6 million, a record for a single coin, when
it is auctioned July 30.
The record auction price for a coin is just over $4.1
million, paid in August 1999 for an 1804 U.S. silver dollar
also often described as the numismatic equivalent of the famed
Leonardo da Vinci portrait.
Sotheby's is auctioning its Double Eagle, which is 90
percent gold and 10 percent copper, with Stack's Rare Coins,
another auction house.
The 1933 Double Eagle up for sale followed a long and
winding road from its minting to the auction block.
The $20 gold coin was first minted in 1850. It became known
as the "Double Eagle" because the $10 coin that was already
being minted was known as the "Single Eagle."
Designed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1907 at the
behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, the 1933 coin portrays
Lady Liberty carrying a torch and olive branch, and on its
obverse an eagle in flight.
The Mint struck thousands of Double Eagles early in 1933.
They never became official coinage because Theodore
Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin, by then the president, took the
United States off the gold standard, to help the
Depression-ridden economy.
"It is a coin that had been struck in Philadelphia in 1933.
And, this is the only coin that we are ever going to sell to
the private sector. It will be the only 1933 double Eagle
that can be held privately," said David Pickens of the U.S.
Mint.
The Mint melted down most of the 1933 Double Eagles,
reserving two for the Smithsonian Institution.
But 10 escaped into the black market. In the 1940s and
1950s, the mint retrieved and destroyed nine of these.
Sotheby's believes the 10th coin, the one it says it is
auctioning, found its way to the Royal Legation of Egypt.
This governmental entity in 1944 asked the U.S. Treasury
Department for a license to export the coin to Egypt's King
Farouk, an avid coin collector. Not realising the coin's
significance, the department granted the license.
For 50 years, the coin vanished. But in 1995 British coin
dealer Stephen Fenton bought it, and in February 1996 he tried
to sell it at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to U.S. Secret
Service agents posing as coin collectors. The coin was seized.
Litigation dragged on until January 2001, when the coin was
moved from 7 World Trade Center to mint depositories.
Sotheby's took delivery of the coin on Tuesday.
The Sotheby's sale will finalize the process of making the
coin legal tender.
"The buyer has to pay not only what it sells for at the
auction but an extra twenty dollars back to the US Government
to make it into real currency. And that sort of, of course
makes it so exciting. Because simply as a gold disc it has no
interest. It has to be a real coin to be worth the millions of
dollars that this coin is surely going to bring. And then of
course someone could go out and buy twenty dollars worth of
goods with it. I don't think they are going to do that
though," said David Redden of Sotheby's.
The Double Eagle being auctioned has suffered slight wear
over the years, but is considered in or near "gem brilliant
uncirculated" condition, a very high quality, Sotheby's said.
Objects often rise in value when they are produced or
released in error. For example, the Inverted Jenny, a 24-cent
stamp issued in 1918 showing an upside-down biplane because of
a printing error, often fetches six-figure sums.
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