The 1933 Double Eagle
$105.00
Why this price? →Size
Style
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The 1933 Double Eagle: A5 to A2, true relative scale
All 4 sizes, true relative scale.
What it's made of
The Story
In 1933, the United States Mint struck 445,500 of these $20 gold pieces — and then, almost overnight, took the country off the gold standard before a single one legally reached the public. The order came down: melt them all.
A small handful escaped anyway, slipped out through a side door of the Philadelphia Mint before the furnaces caught up with them. For decades the Secret Service hunted the survivors down, one by one, until only a single coin remained in private hands — once owned by King Farouk of Egypt, the only Double Eagle the U.S. government ever agreed was legally his to sell. In 2021 it went to auction for over US$18 million, the most ever paid for a coin.
It is a strange kind of fame: the most valuable object of its type in the world, made valuable precisely because it was never supposed to exist at all. Oscar drew it small, and let it sit alone on the page — the way it likely sat, unnoticed, in someone’s pocket in 1933, before anyone knew what it was.