Legal Double Eagle
When is a $20 gold coin worth $6 million? Apparently when it is illegal to own it, or, more exactly, was formerly illegal. Sotheby’s is holding a single lot auction on July 30th, solely for the purposes of selling “the only 1933 Double Eagle now or ever authorized for private ownership by the United States Government.” These 1933 coins were ordered destroyed after Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6260 which prohibited banks from paying out gold, taking the U.S. off of the gold standard. However, ten of them are known to have mysteriously disappeared from the mint. Nine were discovered and destroyed. Another, perhaps this one, surfaced at auction in 1954, but the sale was halted by the U.S. government. The coin was not destroyed, however, and it is believed to be the one that surfaced again in 1996 when a respected British dealer tried to sell it to Secret Service agents posing as coin collectors. After five years of legal bickering, the U.S. is allowing this Sotheby auction, and turning this one coin into legal tender. The sale price will be increased by $20 which will go to the United States Treasury, effectively sealing the legality of this much traveled piece of gold history.