Selby Kiefer (3:30)

I'm Selby Keifer. I'm the international Senior Specialist for Books and Manuscripts here at Sotheby's. It's a gorgeous coin. It was designed at the behest of President Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 by Augustus Saint Gaudens, the famous sculptor. The front of the coin shows Lady Liberty striding forward, her one foot on a rock. In her one hand, she's holding aloft a torch, in the other, an olive branch. And on the reverse, an American eagle, a bald eagle in flight. It's one of the most famous designs in American numismatic history. 1933, the country was in the depths of a Great Depression. Unemployment was rampant. The economy of the country was based on gold, and because of the uncertainty, people were hoarding gold, withdrawing their gold savings and causing further economic upset. The 1932 presidential election saw the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, defeated by Franklin Roosevelt. And one of the first acts that Roosevelt issued was taking the United States off of the gold standard and outlawing private ownership of gold money. No one told the Mint not to go ahead with the New Year's issue of coinage. So the Philadelphia Mint went ahead and minted 445,500 1933 coins. And after Roosevelt had issued his directive, no one knew quite what to do with them. Ultimately, it was decided that two should be sent to the Smithsonian and the rest were to be melted down into gold ingots. But an unscrupulous employee at the Philadelphia Mint evidently lifted a number of these coins. It was initially thought maybe 10 or 12. It was probably closer, in fact, to 25. These coins started to leak out in the collecting community. When the government realized this, directives were put out that these could not be privately owned. They were the property of the US Mint. But one of them escaped again through the machinations of bureaucracy. King Farouk of Egypt had many passions, particularly coin collecting and gold coins. And he didn't do anything underhanded from his perspective. He was approached by a legitimate coin dealer who offered him this. He knew about the prohibition of the export of gold from the US and so he wrote to the Treasury Department to get a license to export his coin. And King Farouk was able to add a 1933 double eagle to his own collection. When King Farouk was overthrown in 1952, the coins, among all of his other assets, were seized by the Egyptian government. Two years later, his coin collection was put up for sale by Sotheby's in Cairo. And at that point, the US Government made a request that the coin be withdrawn from auction and returned to the United States. They did withdraw the coin from auction, but they did not return it to the United States. And from then until 1996, the coin disappeared. We don't know all of the details, but the coin next resurfaces, likely in the hands of the son, or a son of one of the generals who led the coup against Farouk. Secrets like this don't stay hidden very long. And rumors started to circulate and an English coin dealer named Steven Fenton was able to purchase, legitimately, he thought, the coin from this source in Cairo. Fenton then set about finding an American buyer and got in touch with Jack Moore, who was a coin dealer in Texas. Moore felt that he had a client for the coin. But without telling Fenton, he asked a friend of his who was a former FBI special agent about the legitimacy of the coin. That resulted in Moore becoming a confidential informant for the FBI. He was an integral part in setting up a sting operation to catch Fenton with the coin. So a meeting was arranged at the Waldorf Astoria. And the result of the meeting was not a sale that would have been in the range of perhaps $750,000, but the seizure of the coin and the arrest of Stephen Fenton. Just a few days before the case was going to go to trial, the government and Fenton reached an agreement. The government would sell it and share the proceeds of the sale with Fenton. One doesn't think of coin sales as particularly exciting. Completely the opposite. Everyone was excited. The coin world was over the moon about this, this great mysterious coin that no one was even sure if it existed. Turns out that it did exist, this coin that couldn't be sold or owned. Suddenly, the government said, yes, this one time it can be yours, and it will be a real Coin. Many hundreds of people in the room there to see history made. And they did see history made. David Redden was the auctioneer. He said, would you like to be on the phone bidding? I said, sure. So he explained who I would be on the phone with. Private person, not a coin collector, and not really familiar with auction. I was thinking, well, probably not much is going to happen here. It's now known. I was on the phone with Stuart Weitzman, the designer particularly noted for his line of shoes. There was other phones bidding. The price kept going up. And at one point, maybe as we were nearing $5 million, he said, well, that other bidder is coming awfully close to buying the coin. And I said, well, you are, too. And he ended up as the winner. I think the fact that I was on the phone was helpful in disguising his identity because I was so closely associated with the book department. I think there was a natural assumption that perhaps it was a major figure in the book world who had bought the coin.

David Tripp (10:24)

My name is David Tripp. I'm a special consultant to Sotheby's. My connection with the 1933 double eagle goes back to when Sotheby's was first contacted by the United States government, and we had to make a proposal to sell it. And since that time, it has either dogged my heels or I have dogged its heels. When we sold, the 1933 main sales room at 1334 York Avenue was packed. Never in the history of coins had that happened before. And I can tell you quite candidly, it has not happened since. And it wasn't just the coin community. It was everywhere. When the hammer came down, doubled, the world record press was electric. And I must admit, I was caught up by it, too. As I was working on the catalog, I would come sit at the dinner table every night with my wife and regale her. And she looked at me and she said, well, why don't you write a book? So I did. And so Illegal Tender, which was published in 2004, linked me even closer to the 1933 Double Eagle. And then a year later, 2005, I was sitting at Sotheby's and David Reddin came into the room and said to me, what do you know about 10 new 1933 double eagles? Well, I would imagine my face drained of all blood. I was staggered. Now, during the 1944 Secret Service investigation, there had been this clue. One of the dealers had told the Secret Service that the man he had bought coins from said that he had had 25 but had only sold 14, which meant that there were more out there. And it turned out that the coins were discovered in a safe deposit box by the family of the jeweler in Philadelphia who had been linked to all the 1933 Double Eagles. And during this time, the United States government asked me if I would be their expert numismatic witness during the litigation. So that was the beginning of another 11 year adventure with the 1933 Double Eagle. It was, to paraphrase Dickens, it was the best of times and the worst of times. During the process, more than 17,000 pages of discovery documents were part of the process. I couldn't see the floor of my office. The trial took 10 days, of which I was on the witness stand for half that time. It was not something I would necessarily want to repeat, but it was a fascinating experience. In the end, the jury found in only a few hours that the United States government had proven that the coins hadn't gone out through the front door, shall we say, and that they belonged to the United States Government. Subsequent to that, the judge who tried the case issued his own declaratory judgment stating that the coins had gone out through unusual means, but that they belonged to the United States Government. The family appealed to and a three judge appellate panel heard the case again and decided that the United States government had not met certain statutory deadlines. Based on that, they decided that the United States government had erred and their remedy was that the coin should go back to the family. Well, this didn't set well. And based on that, United States government asked the entire appeals court, which is 12 or 13 members, to hear the entire case called en banc. The appeal of the appeal was granted. And in this case the judges sided with the United States Government. And they found that the evidence at trial demonstrated overwhelmingly that no 1933 double legal had left through legitimate means and that any that had had either been stolen or embezzled. And again, the United States Government prevailed. It was the never ending story. The family decided to take their case and hope that the United States Supreme Court would hear it. The Supreme Court declined to take the case and it was over. After 11 years of litigation, the United States Government had prevailed. And all the 101933 double Eagles that were part of the case became property of the United States Government once and for all. And they are now sitting in Port Knox and considered to be national treasures.

Selby Kiefer (14:43)

In June 2021, when Stuart Weitzman decided to sell the Double Eagle, we more than doubled the estimate to 10 to 15 million dollars. And again it was exceeded selling for 18,872,000 and remarkably sold again to someone who was not principally a coin collector. Subsequently, the buyer has become a significant coin collector. I guess once you start with the Double Eagle, you have to keep going. I think it's something that transcends its category. It has elements of a crime story mixed up in it. It was minted at a crucial time in American history, and its significance can be explained so simply. You don't have to get into grading or what mint it came from. You just say, this is the only one.

David Tripp (15:43)

For thousands of years the world has relied on gold, and in the United States in 1795 we struck our first gold coin, and in 1933 we struck our last gold coin. This example is the only example that can be owned legally by an individual. It's an icon.

Sotheby's Narrator (16:07)

Thank you for joining us on the Specialist. This story and others are featured in the new book 100 Extraordinary Objects from Sotheby's History, available now at phaidon.com and wherever books are sold. To step further into the world of Sotheby's, visit any one of our galleries, which are open to the public. Go to sotheby's.com to find out more.

Conor Boyle (16:28)

Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Specialist, produced by Intelligence Squared in partnership with Sotheby's. If you enjoyed the episode, there's a bounty of others ready for you to listen. With topics ranging from South Asian surrealism to Chinese porcelain to Persian manuscripts. You can find them being released weekly. Just search the Specialist or Sotheby's talks wherever you're listening to this and follow the show.

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