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Law and Coins
AN EXTENSIVE LOOK AT THE LAWS
THAT GOVERN OUR NUMISMATIC
COMMUNITY AND OTHER TOPICS
OF INTEREST
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1933 $20 Shatters Records:
Crowds See Half-hour One Lot Sale
by David L. Ganz
Column 16 - July 31, 2002
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THE 1933 DOUBLE EAGLE
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King Farouk's 1933 $20 gold piece sold for a record $7,590,020 at public auction July 30 in a joint sale conducted by Sotheby's and Stack's in New York City. More than 800 people attended the sale at Sotheby's New York City east side gallery to see numismatic history in the making.
Barry Goldwater Jr., son of the former Senator and presidential candidate in 1964, and himself a former Congressman, makes the opening bid of $2.5 million for National Collector's Mint
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Fewer than a dozen individuals and firms were pre-qualified to bid, and though there were many prominent dealers and collectors present, the winner turned out to be an anonymous telephone bidder who worked with Sotheby's senior vice president Selby Kiffer to make his absentee bids count.
Bidding opened when auctioneer David Redden, Sotheby's vice chairman, announced that Barry Goldwater, Jr., of National Collector's Mint, had bid $2,500,000. Goldwater and the National Collector's contingent that cheered him on stayed active until the $4.5 million mark. Bidding advanced in $100,000 increments.
Cheers erupted three times in the eight minute long contest of wills. When the $5-million mark was broken, making it the world's most expensive coin, again at the $6-million mark, and at the conclusion. The final bid was $6,600,000 to which a 15% buyer's premium was applied, together with a $20 nominal payment to the U.S. Treasury to monetize the coin.
That was paid by Redden himself to U.S. Mint director Henrietta Holsman Fore in the form of a Federal Reserve Note. The balance must be paid by the purchaser within 35 days, by Labor Day. Sotheby's said there was a slim possibility that the buyer's name would be announced at a later date.
About 445,000 of the 1933 double eagles were produced. A dozen of them, Mint officials acknowledge, were purloined and left the Mint under suspicious circumstances. No one really knows how many escaped, but Mint officials are adamant that this is the only one that has ever been monetized and legalized. Others have a different view, however.
The price realized exceeds the $4.19 million paid in 1999 for an 1804 silver dollar. Sports agent and coin dealer Dwight Manley speculated that if a 1933 $20 gold piece could bring a price of $7 million, imagine what a 1913 Liberty nickel - one of five pieces known - might be worth. He is the owner of one specimen.
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David L. Ganz
