The 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle: America's Most Famous Lost Coin
The 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle is arguably the most famous lost coin in American history, with a captivating story that blends intrigue, legality, and the allure of extreme rarity.
Designed by famed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, this coin was intended to replace the older $20 gold pieces and showcase America’s rich artistic heritage.
However, due to the United States’ decision to abandon the gold standard during the Great Depression, the 1933 Double Eagle never made it into general circulation.
The Mint had already produced around 445,000 coins by the time President Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order in 1933 demanded the public turn in all gold coins, effectively halting their distribution.
As a result, these coins were to be melted down and destroyed, but several of them mysteriously disappeared from the Mint’s vaults, sparking one of the greatest numismatic mysteries of all time.
Over the years, a few of these coins surfaced on the market, often amid allegations of theft or illicit transactions. In 1934, a Philadelphia jeweler, Israel Switt, was believed to have obtained a number of these coins through questionable means, and in the following decades, a few made their way into private hands.
The U.S. government aggressively pursued the illegal holders of these coins, and by the 1940s, all known 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles were deemed illegal to own.
However, in 2002, the story took a dramatic turn when one of these coins was legally sold at auction for a jaw-dropping $7.6 million, the highest price ever paid for a coin at the time.