MARCH 24
1944•Secret Service Hunts the 1933 Double Eagles
1964•Kennedy Half Dollar
2016•National Park Service Centennial Commemoratives
The Secret Service Hunt for the 1933 Double Eagles
By March 24, 1944, the United States Secret Service was pursuing one of the strangest cases in American numismatic history: 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles that had somehow escaped the Philadelphia Mint even though none had ever been officially issued to the public. The investigation, launched after examples began appearing in the collector market, eventually traced multiple coins to Philadelphia jeweler and coin dealer Israel Switt and led to the recovery of nine pieces during the 1940s and 1950s. Most were returned to the Mint and destroyed. The case transformed the 1933 Double Eagle from an obscure unissued gold coin into a legendary object at the intersection of numismatics, federal law, theft, diplomacy and international intrigue.
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A Coin That Was Never Supposed to Be in a Collection
The 1933 Double Eagle presents an unusual problem.
It is a genuine United States Mint product.
It was struck from official dies at the Philadelphia Mint.
Yet the federal government maintains that the pieces that entered private hands were never lawfully issued.
Mint records show that 445,500 Saint-Gaudens $20 gold pieces dated 1933 were produced at Philadelphia.
Under normal circumstances, such a production figure would suggest a readily obtainable coin.
Instead, the 1933 Double Eagle became one of the most famous rarities in the world.
This distinction is essential.
A coin can be struck inside a Mint without being legally released into circulation.
The 1933 Double Eagles were manufactured, counted and moved through internal Mint accounting, but they were not released as ordinary coinage to the public.
The Great Depression had shattered banks and confidence in the financial system.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in March 1933, his administration moved aggressively to stabilize banking and restrict monetary gold.
Federal measures sharply restricted gold payments and private monetary gold holdings.
The era in which Americans routinely used $5, $10 and $20 gold pieces as circulating money effectively ended.
The Mint had already begun producing 1933-dated $20 pieces.
But the government's gold policy changed before they entered ordinary circulation.
The result was a large quantity of perfectly genuine coins that were never normally issued.
The great majority of the 1933 Double Eagles were eventually destroyed.
The gold was converted back into bullion as the federal government reorganized its monetary gold stock.
Two examples were transferred by the U.S. Mint for preservation in the national collection.
They are now held by the Smithsonian's National Numismatic Collection.
Those two coins provide an official record of the issue.
But More Than Two Survived
At some point, additional 1933 Double Eagles left Mint custody.
They began moving quietly through the numismatic market.
That created a legal problem unlike the normal discovery of a rare coin.
Authenticity and legal ownership are separate questions.
A genuine painting can be stolen.
A genuine government artifact can be unlawfully removed.
The same principle became central to the 1933 Double Eagle story.
For a collector, a 1933 Double Eagle was irresistible.
It represented the final date of America's circulating $20 gold series.
It carried Augustus Saint-Gaudens' celebrated design.
And almost the entire mintage had been destroyed.
Once Treasury officials determined that no 1933 Double Eagles had been officially issued, privately held examples took on a very different meaning.
The question became: how had they left the Mint?
The United States Mint states that a Secret Service investigation began in 1944 and led to the recovery of nine stolen pieces over approximately the next decade.
That investigation is the basis for the March 24 calendar milestone.
Today the Secret Service is widely associated with protecting presidents.
But the agency was created in 1865 within the Treasury Department to combat counterfeit currency.
Financial crimes and the integrity of federal money were core parts of its mission.
The 1933 Double Eagles were not simply private collectibles with uncertain provenance.
The government regarded them as property unlawfully removed from federal custody.
That placed the case squarely within Treasury and Secret Service concerns.
The investigation led agents to Israel Switt, a Philadelphia jeweler and coin dealer.
Switt became the central private-market figure in the story.
Multiple 1933 Double Eagles that surfaced in the trade were traced back to him.
Switt's location mattered.
He operated in the same city as the Philadelphia Mint.
The surviving illicit coins did not appear randomly across the country; investigators found a chain leading back toward the city where they had been made.
Later government investigations and litigation focused heavily on George McCann, a Philadelphia Mint cashier.
The government's theory was that McCann used his position to remove 1933 Double Eagles and that Switt helped distribute them.
Because the events occurred inside the Mint years before the investigation, reconstructing precisely how each coin left custody was difficult.
Records, accounting practices, witness testimony and patterns of possession became crucial evidence.
Coin production creates extensive records.
Dies are tracked.
Coins are delivered between internal officers.
Balances are reconciled.
Metal is accounted for.
Those records can become evidence decades later.
How could coins disappear while the gold accounts still balanced?
One theory involved exchanging earlier legal double eagles for 1933 pieces of equivalent weight and face value.
Such a substitution could conceal missing coins from simple bullion accounting.
That Does Not Make the Exchange Lawful
Even if gold of equal weight replaced the removed pieces, the government maintains that 1933 Double Eagles themselves were never authorized for public release.
The legal issue was custody and issuance, not merely whether the Mint lost gold weight.
By the time federal investigators acted, examples had passed through dealers and collections.
Some holders may have believed they had purchased legitimate rare coins.
That made recovery more complicated.
If an object is stolen, later purchasers can face loss even if they bought it without knowledge of the theft.
The 1933 Double Eagle saga became a painful demonstration of why provenance matters in high-value collecting.
Collectors often value a famous ownership history because it adds prestige.
But provenance can also establish whether an object could legally have entered private commerce.
For the 1933 Double Eagle, that question became decisive.
The U.S. Mint's official history states that nine examples were seized by, or relinquished to, the Secret Service during the 1940s and 1950s.
They were returned to the Mint.
Those recovered pieces were melted.
From a modern collector's perspective, destroying such extraordinary rarities seems almost unimaginable.
At the time, however, the government viewed them as unlawfully removed unissued coinage, not national numismatic treasures.
When additional 1933 Double Eagles were recovered decades later, the Mint chose not to melt them.
It recognized their historical and numismatic importance and preserved them.
An object may begin as evidence or contraband and later become historically important in its own right.
The 1933 Double Eagle crossed that boundary dramatically.
The most famous privately held example had already traveled far beyond Philadelphia.
It entered the collection of King Farouk of Egypt.
Farouk was an enthusiastic collector of coins, stamps and other objects.
In 1944, a 1933 Double Eagle was submitted to the Treasury Department in connection with an export-license request for the Egyptian king.
Remarkably, Treasury officials issued the license.
The significance of the coin's unissued status had not yet been recognized in time to stop it.
The piece left the United States legally under the export paperwork even though the government later maintained that it had never lawfully left Mint ownership in the first place.
Once investigators understood the problem, the Farouk coin was already in Egypt.
The United States later sought its return.
It did not come back.
King Farouk was overthrown in 1952.
His enormous collections were prepared for auction by the new Egyptian government.
The 1933 Double Eagle appeared in the catalog.
The United States Intervenes
American officials requested that the coin be withdrawn from the sale.
It was removed.
Then it disappeared from public view.
The Farouk specimen became numismatic legend.
Was it still in Egypt?
Had it been sold privately?
Had it been destroyed?
No definitive public answer emerged.
More than half a century after the 1944 investigation began, British coin dealer Stephen Fenton arrived in New York with a 1933 Double Eagle.
He attempted to sell it.
The transaction at New York's Waldorf-Astoria became a Secret Service sting.
Federal agents seized the coin.
The old case had suddenly returned to life.
Evidence and sworn statements suggested the possibility that the Fenton coin was the specimen once owned by King Farouk.
The identification has played a major role in its historical narrative.
Fenton contested the government's claim.
The dispute raised complicated questions because the Farouk coin had once received an official U.S. export license.
Rather than continue litigating to a final judgment, the parties reached an agreement.
The coin would be monetized and sold.
Proceeds would be divided under the settlement.
The government treated the coin as never having been legally issued.
To make private ownership unquestionably lawful, the Mint formally monetized it before sale.
As part of the 2002 auction process, an additional $20 was paid to the United States Treasury.
The symbolic payment corresponded to the coin's face value and completed its formal issuance.
The settlement made that particular specimen unique.
It became the one 1933 Double Eagle the United States government specifically authorized to be privately owned.
On July 30, 2002, the coin sold at Sotheby's in New York for more than $7.5 million including the buyer's premium.
At the time, it established a world-record price for a coin.
The contrast is extreme.
Its legal denomination is twenty dollars.
Its market value derives from rarity, history, legal status, artistic importance and extraordinary demand.
In 2004, ten more 1933 Double Eagles surfaced.
They came from the family of Israel Switt—the same Philadelphia dealer at the center of the original investigation.
Switt's descendants, the Langbord family, submitted ten coins to the Mint for authentication.
The Mint authenticated them as genuine 1933 Double Eagles and retained them.
The Langbord family challenged the government's possession.
The litigation lasted for years and produced extensive examination of Mint records, Secret Service files and the history of the missing coins.
The Government Prevailed
A jury found in favor of the government in 2011.
Subsequent appellate litigation ultimately left the ten coins in federal custody.
Unlike the nine recovered during the earlier Secret Service campaign, the Langbord coins were preserved.
The Mint recognized them as national numismatic treasures.
In 2026, the U.S. Mint announced a display bringing eleven 1933 Double Eagles together: the privately owned monetized specimen and ten government-held examples.
The event underscored how dramatically the status of the coins had changed from evidence destined for melting to celebrated historical artifacts.
The two examples transferred lawfully from the Mint preserve the official record of the issue.
They are not survivors of illicit distribution.
Their provenance is fundamentally different.
Rarity alone does not explain it.
Many coins are rarer.
The 1933 Double Eagle combines nearly every ingredient of a numismatic legend.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens created the Double Eagle at the urging of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Its obverse shows Liberty striding forward with torch and olive branch.
Its reverse shows an eagle flying above the rising sun.
The 1933 date marks the collapse of America's circulating gold-coin system.
The coin stands at the boundary between the classical gold standard and modern monetary policy.
More than 445,000 pieces were struck.
Almost all were destroyed.
That inversion makes the issue fascinating.
Coins escaped the Mint despite never being officially issued.
Exactly how each piece moved through the chain of custody became the subject of federal investigation and litigation.
King Farouk adds international glamour and diplomatic complication.
Few American coins have a provenance story involving a royal palace and a U.S. export license.
Federal agents spent years locating examples.
Collectors and dealers suddenly found themselves holding objects the government considered stolen.
Nine pieces recovered in the original era were melted.
The destruction increased the rarity and mythology of those that remained.
The 1996 Waldorf-Astoria operation reads more like a crime story than a traditional coin history.
The 2002 monetization is virtually without parallel.
A coin dated 1933 received the legal status necessary for private ownership generations after it was struck.
The Langbord discovery reopened the original Philadelphia story and connected the modern litigation directly back to Israel Switt.
Each recovery, court decision, auction and exhibition adds another chapter.
The 1933 Double Eagle is not a static rarity.
Its history is still being written.
The audited CoinCrafters calendar identifies March 24 with the Secret Service hunt and seizure campaign.
Authoritative sources firmly document that the federal investigation began in 1944 and led to recoveries during the following decade.
However, published official summaries do not establish that every often-repeated individual seizure occurred specifically on March 24.
Why That Distinction Matters
Historical calendars naturally prefer exact dates.
But precision should not become false precision.
The responsible approach is to preserve the calendar milestone while distinguishing the well-documented 1944 investigation from uncertain day-by-day seizure chronology.
Coin stories accumulate legends quickly.
Rare objects encourage repetition of dramatic details.
A good historical repository should separate documented facts from plausible but unverified claims.
Its history includes conflicting recollections, secret transactions, incomplete records, litigation positions and decades of rumor.
Claims should be tied to evidence whenever possible.
The U.S. Mint states that no 1933 Double Eagles were issued to the public at the time and that only the two specimens transferred to the national collection left the Mint lawfully.
That position has shaped every recovery case since 1944.
The legal disputes demonstrate that government assertions were not simply accepted without challenge.
Owners and heirs raised questions about Mint practices, exchange possibilities, records and due process.
Numismatic opinion does not determine title.
Legal ownership depends on law and evidence.
The Langbord litigation made that distinction especially clear.
A collector can ask at least three separate questions:
- Is the coin genuine?
- How rare and valuable is it?
- Can it legally be owned?
The 1933 Double Eagle proves those questions can have very different answers.
The dispute was never that the recovered examples were counterfeit.
They were genuine products of the Philadelphia Mint.
The problem was how they left government custody.
A counterfeit is fake money pretending to be genuine.
The illicit 1933 Double Eagles are genuine coins whose legal path into private ownership was the issue.
Before 1944, a collector might have regarded a 1933 Double Eagle as simply an extraordinarily rare date.
After federal recoveries began, possession itself carried legal risk.
A 1933 Double Eagle could not be treated like an ordinary rare Saint-Gaudens issue.
Its chain of custody determined whether the government might claim it.
The privately owned example is not merely valuable because it survived.
It is valuable because its 2002 settlement created a unique legal status.
When the legally ownable specimen returned to auction in June 2021, it sold for $18.8725 million.
It again became the world's most expensive coin sold at auction.
Designer and collector Stuart Weitzman had owned the coin before the 2021 sale.
Its public reappearance renewed worldwide interest in the issue.
No better example demonstrates the difference between face value and numismatic value.
The coin's denomination is almost irrelevant to its collector price.
But Without the 1944 Investigation, the Story Would Be Different
If the government had treated privately held 1933 Double Eagles as ordinary collectible coins, more examples might have survived openly.
There would have been no decades-long Secret Service hunt, no melted recoveries and no unique legal settlement.
The Mint's original destruction orders made the coin rare.
The later destruction of recovered examples made it rarer still.
Law enforcement therefore became an unusual force shaping the surviving population of a collectible coin.
Low mintage.
Melting.
Circulation wear.
Accidental loss.
The 1933 Double Eagle adds another mechanism: government recovery and destruction.
The Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle had once represented the pinnacle of American circulating gold coinage.
Its final date instead became evidence of the government's decision to abandon that system.
Gold moved away from everyday domestic money and increasingly became a government reserve asset.
The Double Eagle became obsolete almost overnight.
What could no longer circulate as twenty dollars became one of the most desired collectibles on Earth.
Monetary usefulness disappeared.
Historical and numismatic value exploded.
The government did not want the coins circulating.
That very fact ultimately made them famous.
The 1933 Double Eagle story did not end when the coins were melted in the 1930s.
It entered a new phase in 1944 when federal investigators began treating surviving private examples as missing government property.
From that point forward, the history of the coin belonged not only to collectors and Mint historians but also to Secret Service agents, Treasury lawyers, courts and diplomats.
That transformation is the significance of the March 24 calendar entry.
The 1933 Double Eagle stopped being merely an unissued rarity.
It became the object of a federal hunt that would continue, in one form or another, for generations.
By March 24, 1944, the Secret Service investigation into privately circulating 1933 Double Eagles was underway, beginning a recovery campaign that would eventually bring nine examples back into federal custody during the 1940s and 1950s. The coins were genuine U.S. Mint products, but none had been officially issued to the public, and the government regarded the privately held pieces as stolen federal property. Most early recoveries were melted. One coin associated with King Farouk escaped the dragnet, resurfaced in a 1996 Secret Service sting, and was uniquely monetized and sold in 2002. Ten more surfaced from Israel Switt's family in 2004. What began as an investigation in 1944 became one of the longest, strangest and most consequential ownership disputes in the history of American numismatics.
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