MARCH 2
1933•1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle
1903•U.S.-Philippine Coinage System
The First 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles Are Struck
On March 2, 1933, the Philadelphia Mint began striking what would become the most famous forbidden coin in American history: the 1933 Saint-Gaudens $20 double eagle. The Mint ultimately produced 445,500 pieces, yet none were released through ordinary channels for public circulation. Almost the entire mintage was melted after the United States abandoned domestic gold-coin circulation. A few escaped, however, beginning a saga of Secret Service investigations, a royal collection, decades of litigation and record-setting auctions. The 1933 double eagle became legendary not because it was never made—but because it was made in quantity and then almost completely erased.
◆
The United States Mint struck nearly half a million of them.
Yet an ordinary American could not walk into a bank and receive one.
Most were destroyed.
A few escaped.
One traveled into the collection of a king.
Others triggered Secret Service investigations and decades of litigation.
One eventually became the most expensive coin ever sold at auction.
The story began at the Philadelphia Mint in March 1933.
The Last Year of America's Circulating Gold Coinage
The double eagle was a $20 gold coin.
Congress created the denomination in 1849 during the California Gold Rush.
For more than eight decades, double eagles served as high-value money, bank reserves and international settlement pieces.
By 1933, however, the monetary world that had created them was collapsing.
The design dated back to President Theodore Roosevelt's campaign to beautify American coinage.
Roosevelt recruited sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of the most celebrated American artists of his era.
Saint-Gaudens created radically new designs for the $10 eagle and $20 double eagle.
The double eagle debuted in 1907.
The obverse depicts Liberty advancing toward the viewer.
She holds a torch in her right hand and an olive branch in her left.
Behind her rise rays of sunlight and the U.S. Capitol.
The composition is energetic, monumental and unlike the static portraiture of much earlier American coinage.
It became one of the most admired designs ever placed on a U.S. coin.
The reverse presents a powerful eagle in flight above a rising sun.
Saint-Gaudens's design combines classical imagery with a distinctly modern sense of motion.
Later issues included the motto IN GOD WE TRUST, which was absent from the earliest 1907 version.
By 1933, the design had been in production for more than a quarter century.
Then Came the Great Depression
The stock-market crash of 1929 was followed by banking failures, unemployment and severe economic contraction.
Americans frightened by bank instability withdrew money.
Gold became especially important because the dollar remained tied to it.
People and institutions could hoard gold coin or demand gold in exchange for paper currency.
That placed pressure on the nation's monetary reserves.
Franklin D. Roosevelt became president on March 4, 1933.
The banking crisis was already acute.
Within days, the new administration took extraordinary emergency measures.
National banking operations were temporarily restricted.
The government's relationship with gold changed dramatically.
The double eagle was caught directly in that transformation.
Mint production records show that the Philadelphia Mint began striking 1933 double eagles on March 2.
That was two days before Roosevelt's inauguration.
Production continued during a period when federal gold policy was changing almost by the day.
The Mint ultimately manufactured 445,500 double eagles bearing the 1933 date.
At $20 each, 445,500 coins represented a face value of $8,910,000.
Each coin contained nearly one troy ounce of gold.
Physically, this was no tiny experimental production.
Hundreds of thousands of genuine 1933 double eagles existed inside the Mint system.
The extraordinary rarity arose from what happened after striking.
This distinction is the key to the entire story.
The coins were struck.
But Mint records and subsequent federal litigation established that 1933 double eagles were not released to the public through normal lawful issuance.
They remained government property inside the Mint system.
That legal difference eventually determined the fate of every privately held example the government could find.
During spring 1933, the Roosevelt administration restricted gold payments and private monetary gold ownership.
Executive Order 6102, issued April 5, required most gold coin, bullion and gold certificates to be delivered to the government, subject to stated exceptions.
The objective was to stop gold hoarding and stabilize the banking and monetary system.
Normal domestic circulation of large gold coins was effectively ending.
The Gold Reserve Act
Congress followed with the Gold Reserve Act of 1934.
The federal government consolidated monetary gold and changed the statutory gold value of the dollar.
The official price of gold rose from $20.67 to $35 per troy ounce.
The old system in which Americans routinely used or redeemed currency for circulating gold coin was over.
The Mint had produced a current-year gold coin for a monetary system that ceased functioning before the coins could enter normal circulation.
They were now unnecessary.
Most of the 1933 double eagles remained in government custody.
Eventually they were ordered destroyed.
Two examples were lawfully transferred from the U.S. Mint to the Smithsonian Institution's National Numismatic Collection.
Those coins were preserved as historical specimens.
They are crucial exceptions.
The government has consistently recognized their transfer as lawful.
The problem involved the additional pieces that somehow left the Mint.
Hundreds of thousands of 1933 double eagles were melted.
Their gold returned to bullion form.
The coins effectively vanished.
Had every piece except the Smithsonian pair been destroyed, the 1933 double eagle would still be historically fascinating—but its story would have been much simpler.
Not every piece disappeared.
During the 1930s and early 1940s, 1933 double eagles surfaced among collectors and dealers.
That raised an obvious question:
How could privately held examples exist if the Mint had never officially released the issue?
The answer led federal investigators toward Philadelphia.
Philadelphia jeweler and coin dealer Israel Switt became a central figure in the story.
Government investigations connected Switt with multiple 1933 double eagles that had entered the numismatic market.
How the coins physically left the Mint became the subject of extensive investigation, testimony and later litigation.
The government maintained that the pieces had been unlawfully removed.
In 1944, the U.S. Secret Service began investigating 1933 double eagles in private hands.
Over the following years, nine examples were recovered by seizure or voluntary surrender.
Those nine were returned to the Mint.
They were subsequently destroyed.
Every recovery made the surviving population smaller and the mystery larger.
Before federal officials fully understood that 1933 double eagles had escaped, one extraordinary example had taken a legal-looking route overseas.
The Royal Legation of Egypt sought permission to export a 1933 double eagle for the collection of King Farouk of Egypt.
Because of U.S. gold restrictions, an export license was required.
The Treasury approved it.
The Farouk Export License
The license was issued in 1944.
Officials apparently did not recognize the significance of the date before approving export.
The coin therefore left the United States under a government-issued license even though the government's later position was that the coin had never been lawfully issued from the Mint in the first place.
That bureaucratic mistake would become enormously important.
Farouk was an avid collector whose holdings included thousands of coins.
After he was deposed in 1952, Egypt prepared to auction his vast collections.
In 1954, the 1933 double eagle appeared in the Cairo auction catalog.
U.S. officials noticed.
The Treasury requested that the coin be withdrawn.
It was.
After its withdrawal from the 1954 sale, the Farouk coin disappeared from public view.
For decades, its location was unknown.
The most famous American gold coin had become a numismatic ghost.
Collectors knew it had existed.
The government wanted it.
No one publicly knew where it was.
In 1996, British coin dealer Stephen Fenton brought a 1933 double eagle to New York.
He attempted to sell it in a transaction involving undercover U.S. Secret Service agents.
Federal authorities seized the coin at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
A major legal battle followed.
The coin's pedigree became central to its mystique.
Evidence strongly associated it with the example once owned by King Farouk, although the historical chain of custody contained gaps.
The old export license complicated the dispute.
Unlike other escaped examples, the Farouk piece had actually received federal permission to leave the United States.
After years of litigation, the government and Fenton reached a settlement.
The coin would be sold publicly.
Proceeds would be divided under the agreement.
Most importantly, the United States Mint would formally monetize the coin so its new owner could possess it legally.
No other privately held 1933 double eagle received that treatment.
Sotheby's and Stack's auctioned the coin in New York on July 30, 2002.
The hammer price was $6.6 million.
With the buyer's premium, the amount reached $7.59 million.
Then came one of the strangest details in numismatic history.
An Extra $20
An additional $20 was paid to the United States Treasury.
That payment formally monetized the double eagle.
The final amount became $7,590,020.
A coin struck for $20 in 1933 was finally issued as money nearly seventy years later.
The settlement made that particular coin uniquely legal for private ownership.
The government did not announce a general amnesty for other 1933 double eagles.
Quite the opposite.
The Mint stated that future recovered pieces would not be monetized or sold.
That policy soon mattered.
In 2004, the family of Israel Switt discovered ten 1933 double eagles in a safe-deposit box.
Switt's daughter, Joan Langbord, and her family submitted the coins to the Mint for authentication.
The Mint authenticated them.
Then the government retained them.
A major ownership battle began.
The Langbord family argued that the government could not simply keep the coins and challenged the seizure and ownership claims.
The government argued that the coins had never been lawfully issued and remained federal property.
The litigation lasted for years.
It generated an unusually detailed public record about Mint procedures, gold accounting and the history of the 1933 issue.
In 2011, a federal jury considered the evidence.
The jury found in favor of the United States.
Subsequent judicial rulings held that the ten double eagles had not been lawfully removed from the Mint and remained government property.
Appeals continued, but the government ultimately prevailed.
Unlike the nine recovered during the 1940s and 1950s, the ten Langbord coins were preserved.
The U.S. Mint has described them as national numismatic treasures.
They remain in government custody.
The decision ensured that a substantial group of authentic 1933 double eagles survived for historical study and exhibition.
The known surviving population includes the two Smithsonian specimens, the privately owned Farouk/Fenton example and the ten Langbord pieces retained by the government.
Historical records also document the nine recovered pieces destroyed decades earlier.
Whether any additional 1933 double eagles remain undiscovered has fueled speculation for generations.
No undocumented example should be assumed genuine or legally ownable merely because such speculation exists.
The Coin Returns to Auction
The legally private example eventually entered the collection of fashion designer Stuart Weitzman.
In 2021, Sotheby's offered it again.
The result shattered the previous world record for a coin.
The 1933 double eagle sold for $18,872,250.
The number is staggering.
But the price cannot be explained by gold content.
It reflects a combination of extraordinary rarity, legal uniqueness, artistic importance, royal provenance, government intrigue and global fame.
Many coins are rarer numerically.
Few have a story remotely comparable.
Most rare coins are rare because few were made or few survived.
The 1933 double eagle is different.
445,500 were struck.
Its rarity was created by government policy and destruction.
That makes it a manufactured rarity in the literal historical sense: a mass-produced coin transformed into an extreme rarity after production.
The privately owned example is not merely scarce.
Its ownership status is unique.
The 2002 settlement and monetization gave one specific coin a legal position that other escaped examples do not share.
That makes provenance inseparable from value.
For this issue, knowing exactly which coin you are discussing is essential.
The Smithsonian examples never needed secret dealers, undercover agents or courtroom battles.
They entered the National Numismatic Collection through lawful government transfer.
They preserve the 1933 issue as artifacts of national monetary history.
Their existence also proves why the phrase “every 1933 double eagle was illegal” is inaccurate.
The legal history depends on how a particular specimen left Mint custody.
The 1933 double eagle is historically important even without the mystery.
It marks the end of regular United States circulating gold coinage.
For generations, Americans had used federal gold pieces from $1 through $20.
After 1933, that system was gone.
Gold coins would eventually return as bullion and collector products, not ordinary circulating money.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens died in 1907, the same year his double eagle entered production.
He never saw the Great Depression.
He never saw Roosevelt suspend gold payments.
He never saw hundreds of thousands of his coins melted.
And he certainly never saw one sell for nearly $19 million.
Yet his design became the face of the entire drama.
Why Collectors Love the Story
The 1933 double eagle contains almost every ingredient of numismatic legend:
a beautiful design,
a famous sculptor,
the Great Depression,
presidential monetary policy,
a king,
a Philadelphia coin dealer,
Secret Service agents,
a missing treasure,
a Waldorf-Astoria seizure,
federal trials,
and record-setting auctions.
It sounds fictional.
It is not.
The legal battles forced extraordinary scrutiny of 1933 Mint records.
Researchers examined production totals, cashier records, assay procedures, accounting practices and the movement of gold coins within the Mint.
Those records are why the March 2 first-strike milestone can be placed within a detailed institutional history.
The famous mystery rests on paperwork as much as legend.
The 1933 double eagle offers one of the clearest lessons in the difference between manufacturing and issuance.
A coin can be physically struck and still remain government property.
Mint accounting and lawful release matter.
That principle became decisive in the government's recovery cases.
For numismatists, “mintage” alone never tells the entire story.
Most accounts of the 1933 double eagle focus on the Farouk coin, the Secret Service or the multimillion-dollar auctions.
March 2 takes the story back to its beginning.
Workers at the Philadelphia Mint were simply producing current-year $20 gold pieces.
No one standing beside the presses could have known those coins were about to become unusable as ordinary money.
The 1933 double eagle was born under one system and destroyed under another.
It was designed for a nation where gold coin formed part of the monetary structure.
Within weeks, federal policy was moving decisively away from domestic gold circulation.
The coin became obsolete almost as soon as it existed.
That historical timing created the legend.
Hundreds of thousands were struck.
Two went legally to the Smithsonian.
A small number escaped.
Nine recovered pieces were destroyed.
Ten more were recovered decades later and preserved by the government.
One extraordinary specimen was monetized through a unique settlement and became legal for private ownership.
That one coin went on to set world auction records.
On March 2, 1933, the Philadelphia Mint began striking the 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle. What began as routine production of a $20 gold piece became the opening chapter of perhaps the greatest saga in American numismatic history.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1903 — U.S.-Philippine Coinage System — Congressional act established a standard of value and coinage system for the Philippine Islands under U.S. administration