Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle 1933

Rank 02

The 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle is the rarest coin in United States History. This original $20 coin was sold at an auction for over $7 million dollars. Today less then 12 of these coins are known to exist. During the Great Depression all gold coins were recalled for melting including the Double Eagles. Only twelve of the coins did not make it back to the mint and were thought to be smuggled out by the employees working there. Today, most of the dozen coins have not been recovered or found and are still out there lost and forgotten.

Some of the Double Eagles Escaped the Melt Down: Two of the 1933 specimens were given by the Mint to the U.S. National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institute. These were the only two legal specimens to ever become part of a coin collection; however, by 1952, the Secret Service had confiscated 8 more 1933 Double Eagles! How did they leave the Mint Why weren't they melted down.

We may never know for certain how these coins left the Mint, but there is a general consensus among scholars that a Mint cashier by the name of George McCann exchanged about 20 1933's doomed for destruction and replaced them with earlier dated Double Eagles. This way, the accounting books would balance and nobody would realize that anything was amiss. What we do know for sure is that a Philadelphia area jeweler by the name of Israel Switt came into possession of at least 19 of the coins.

Israel Switt sold at least 9 of the 1933 Double Eagles privately to collectors, one of which found its way into the collection of King Farouk of Egypt. When the Secret Service discovered that these coins had surfaced, they confiscated them all because they were considered to be stolen property of the U.S. Mint. However, King Farouk had legally exported his coin before the theft was discovered, and the Secret Service was unable to recover his specimen through diplomatic channels.