AUGUST 11
2005•U.S. Mint Announces Recovery of Ten 1933 Double Eagles
1794•James B. Longacre: Birthday
The U.S. Mint Reveals Ten More 1933 Double Eagles
On August 11, 2005, the United States Mint publicly announced one of the most extraordinary numismatic discoveries of the modern era: ten additional 1933 Double Eagles had been recovered and authenticated. The coins had been submitted by descendants of Philadelphia jeweler and coin dealer Israel Switt, whose name had been linked to surviving 1933 Double Eagles since the Secret Service investigations of the 1940s. Mint officials authenticated the ten pieces on June 21, 2005, but kept the discovery confidential until the August announcement. Their appearance instantly transformed the known population of America's most famous forbidden gold coin and launched a legal battle that would last more than a decade.
◆
Ten Coins That Were Not Supposed to Exist
The 1933 Double Eagle already occupied a unique place in American numismatics before August 2005.
The Philadelphia Mint had struck 445,500 pieces.
None were officially issued to the public as circulating money.
Nearly the entire mintage was later melted.
Yet a small number escaped the government's destruction program.
On August 11, 2005, the United States Mint issued a press release announcing that it had recovered ten more examples.
The coins had been turned over to the Mint by the family of Israel Switt.
The Mint described the pieces as genuine 1933 Double Eagles and placed them in secure government custody.
The announcement was immediate international numismatic news.
The public announcement date and authentication date are different.
The Mint states that the coins were authenticated on June 21, 2005.
August 11 was the date the government publicly revealed the discovery.
That distinction matters because both dates are important in the chronology.
The master calendar correctly uses August 11 for the public announcement event.
The Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle
The $20 Double Eagle had been America's largest regular gold denomination since the California Gold Rush era.
In 1907, Augustus Saint-Gaudens redesigned it at the urging of President Theodore Roosevelt.
The resulting coin is widely regarded as one of the greatest designs in United States numismatic history.
Liberty strides forward on the obverse while an eagle flies above the rising sun on the reverse.
Saint-Gaudens was one of America's leading sculptors.
Roosevelt believed United States coinage had become artistically uninspired and wanted the nation's money to rival the beauty of ancient Greek coins.
He turned to Saint-Gaudens for help.
The sculptor's Double Eagle became the most celebrated result of that collaboration.
The Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle remained in production through 1933.
But the final year coincided with a national banking and monetary crisis.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration restricted gold payments and private monetary gold holdings.
Gold coins ceased to function normally in domestic circulation.
The final Double Eagles were caught in the middle of that transformation.
The Philadelphia Mint produced 445,500 Double Eagles dated 1933.
They were ordinary in production quantity but extraordinary in legal status.
They were not released into circulation through normal channels.
Instead, they remained under government control as the United States moved away from circulating gold coinage.
Two examples were officially transferred to the Smithsonian Institution for the National Numismatic Collection.
Those pieces provided a permanent institutional record of the final Saint-Gaudens issue.
The rest of the Mint-held stock was ultimately designated for destruction.
Most of the 1933 Double Eagles were melted in 1937.
By the 1940s, 1933 Double Eagles began appearing in the numismatic marketplace.
The Secret Service investigated.
The government concluded that the coins had left the Philadelphia Mint without lawful authorization.
Several pieces were recovered from collectors.
The trail repeatedly led back to one Philadelphia dealer: Israel Switt.
Switt was a Philadelphia jeweler and coin dealer.
His shop operated near the Mint.
He dealt extensively in gold coins and precious metals.
When investigators traced surviving 1933 Double Eagles during the 1940s, Switt emerged as the common source for multiple pieces.
That connection would become central again six decades later.
The Secret Service Investigation
Federal investigators recovered a number of 1933 Double Eagles during the 1940s and 1950s.
Those coins were returned to government custody.
Nine were eventually melted.
At the time, officials treated them primarily as government property that had improperly escaped the Mint rather than as national numismatic treasures deserving preservation.
One coin escaped the government's early recovery effort in a particularly unusual way.
In 1944, a 1933 Double Eagle was sold to King Farouk of Egypt.
The United States government mistakenly issued an export license for it.
By the time officials recognized the error, the coin had left the country.
Its later history became legendary.
After Farouk was deposed in 1952, his enormous collection was prepared for auction.
The United States requested return of the 1933 Double Eagle.
The coin was withdrawn from the sale.
Then it vanished from public view for decades.
Its disappearance added another layer of mystery to an already extraordinary issue.
In 1996, British dealer Stephen Fenton brought a 1933 Double Eagle to New York.
A Secret Service sting operation resulted in its seizure.
Evidence linked the piece to the Farouk specimen.
A lengthy legal dispute followed.
Eventually the government and Fenton reached a settlement allowing the coin to be sold.
On July 30, 2002, the Farouk-associated 1933 Double Eagle sold at Sotheby's in New York for $7.59 million.
The sale set a world record for a coin at the time.
As part of the arrangement, the purchaser paid an additional $20 to the United States Treasury so the coin could be formally monetized.
It became the only 1933 Double Eagle legally authorized for private ownership.
A Coin With Unique Legal Status
That legal distinction is crucial.
The coin is not unique because only one 1933 Double Eagle survives.
Multiple examples survive.
It is unique because it is the only one the United States government has authorized to be privately owned.
The others are held by the federal government or the Smithsonian.
The story changed dramatically after Israel Switt's descendants examined property associated with the family.
Ten 1933 Double Eagles were found in a safe-deposit box.
The discovery linked the coins directly to the dealer already associated with the issue during the 1940s investigations.
The family sought authentication.
Switt's daughter, Joan Langbord, and other family members became central to the new chapter.
The family turned the ten coins over to the United States Mint for authentication.
That decision would have enormous legal consequences.
Instead of simply authenticating and returning the pieces, the government retained them.
Mint experts examined the coins.
On June 21, the Mint authenticated all ten as genuine 1933 Double Eagles.
This was an extraordinary result.
The known government-held population suddenly increased dramatically.
The discovery also provided a direct physical link to the historical Switt investigation.
For several weeks, the authentication remained confidential.
Then on August 11, the Mint publicly announced the recovery.
The press release emphasized the rarity and historic importance of the coins.
The ten pieces were placed in secure storage at the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox.
America's most famous gold-coin mystery had acquired ten new physical witnesses.
Fort Knox is synonymous with United States gold reserves.
Housing the coins there reflected both their enormous potential market value and their status as disputed federal property.
These were not merely rare collectibles.
They were evidence in a looming legal fight over ownership.
The Langbord family argued that the government had no right simply to retain the coins.
The family sought their return.
The government maintained that the pieces had never been lawfully issued and therefore remained property of the United States.
The disagreement became one of the most important coin-ownership cases in American legal history.
The Central Legal Question
The dispute was not about whether the coins were genuine.
They were.
The question was whether they could ever have lawfully left the Mint.
If they had been stolen or embezzled, ownership could not legitimately pass to later possessors.
If lawful release were possible, the family's claim would be much stronger.
Historical Mint documents, cashier records, delivery procedures, gold regulations, and the chronology of 1933 became courtroom evidence.
Numismatic history had to be reconstructed with legal precision.
Questions collectors had debated for decades were no longer academic.
They could determine ownership of coins potentially worth tens of millions of dollars.
The case could not be understood without the extraordinary monetary events of 1933.
The Roosevelt administration had halted gold payments and changed the rules surrounding monetary gold.
Double Eagles could still be struck for accounting and international purposes even though ordinary domestic release had effectively ended.
This unusual environment complicated later arguments about what “issued” meant.
The Langbord litigation explored whether 1933 Double Eagles could have left through legitimate Mint exchange procedures.
The government argued that no lawful channel existed for public acquisition of the pieces.
The family challenged aspects of the historical reconstruction.
The debate required detailed examination of Mint practices rather than relying on the simple fact that the coins had been struck.
The case eventually went to trial in federal court.
Experts testified about Mint records, coin production, accounting, and the history of surviving 1933 Double Eagles.
The jury concluded that the coins had been stolen from the United States Mint.
Subsequent appeals focused on both ownership and procedural issues.
Years of Appeals
The litigation moved through multiple stages in the federal courts.
At one point, a panel ruling favored the Langbord family on procedural grounds.
The full appellate court later reversed that result.
The United States ultimately retained the ten coins.
The Supreme Court declined to take the case, leaving the government victory intact.
One of the most important differences between the twenty-first-century recovery and the 1940s recoveries is what happened next.
The government did not melt the Langbord coins.
They were preserved.
That decision recognized their enormous cultural and numismatic significance.
Modern stewardship replaced the earlier destruction policy.
The transformation is striking.
Earlier recovered examples were treated as unauthorized government gold and destroyed.
By 2005, the same issue was recognized as one of the nation's greatest numismatic artifacts.
The metal had not changed.
The historical meaning had.
Time had converted a custody problem into cultural heritage.
The known surviving population includes the two Smithsonian specimens, the single privately owned Farouk-associated coin, and the ten Langbord coins retained by the government.
That produces thirteen publicly acknowledged surviving examples.
Rumors of additional pieces have circulated for decades.
No additional privately held example has achieved the legal status of the Farouk coin.
The privately owned 1933 Double Eagle returned to auction in June 2021.
It sold for $18.8725 million.
That result again made it one of the world's most valuable coins.
The extraordinary price reflects not simply rarity but the unique legal right to private ownership.
Ordinarily, discovering ten additional examples of an ultra-rarity might be expected to reduce its market value.
The 1933 Double Eagle behaves differently because ownership status matters.
The Langbord coins cannot simply enter the collector market.
The privately owned specimen therefore remains unique in a practical and legal sense even though thirteen examples are known.
Numismatists usually think of rarity as a question of population.
How many were struck?
How many survive?
How many exist in high grade?
The 1933 Double Eagle adds another category: how many can legally be privately owned?
For this issue, the answer is one.
Why the 2005 Discovery Was So Important
The ten coins did more than increase the census.
They connected directly to Israel Switt, the central dealer in the original Secret Service investigation.
They reopened historical questions about how the coins left the Mint.
They forced federal courts to examine numismatic evidence in extraordinary detail.
And they ensured that ten examples once destined for melting would instead survive.
Many great coin discoveries come from shipwrecks, buried hoards, old collections, or forgotten bank holdings.
The Langbord discovery was different.
The coins emerged from the family of the dealer who had been linked to the issue six decades earlier.
That provenance made the find historically explosive before anyone even considered market value.
Returning the coins after authentication could have implied that private ownership was lawful.
Retaining them guaranteed litigation.
Destroying them would have repeated a decision modern numismatists would regard as catastrophic.
The Mint chose retention and preservation.
The courts eventually upheld the government's ownership.
On August 11, 2005, the United States Mint revealed that ten more genuine 1933 Double Eagles had survived the great gold destruction of the 1930s.
The announcement transformed a legendary coin story overnight.
A rarity once represented publicly by only a handful of known survivors suddenly had ten newly authenticated examples tied directly to Israel Switt's family.
But the discovery did not make the 1933 Double Eagle ordinary.
Instead, it created an unprecedented legal battle over what it means to own a coin that was struck by the United States but never lawfully issued to the public.
The ten pieces survived the Mint's furnaces, six decades of secrecy, and years of litigation.
Today they remain government property—and physical evidence in one of the strangest chapters in the history of American money.
Also on This Day: August 11, 1794
James Barton Longacre, future Chief Engraver of the United States Mint, was born on August 11, 1794, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Longacre became Chief Engraver in 1844 and held the position until his death in 1869.
His designs include the Indian Head cent, the two-cent piece, the three-cent silver and nickel types, the gold dollar, and the Liberty Head Double Eagle—the very $20 denomination whose Saint-Gaudens successor would later produce the famous 1933 issue.
Longacre's career also encompassed the introduction of IN GOD WE TRUST on circulating U.S. coinage through the two-cent piece in 1864.
This birthday remains the master calendar's secondary “Also on This Day” entry and is not promoted over the selected 2005 Double Eagle announcement.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1794 — James B. Longacre: Birthday — James Barton Longacre was born in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. As fourth Chief Engraver he created major U.S. designs including the Indian Head cent, two-cent piece, three-cent nickel and much of the mid-19th-century gold coinage.