ILLEGAL TENDER

The former head of Sotheby’s coin department tracks one of the most coveted American coins from its Depression-era minting to a spectacular auction in July 2002, when one example sold for more than $7.5 million.

Debut author Tripp rightly begins his story of the 1933 Double Eagle, a $20 gold piece, with its designer, celebrated sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Commissioned (if not outright bullied) by Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 to restore mythic grandeur to US coinage, Saint-Gaudens created the beautiful Double Eagle. But as the incoming Roosevelt administration faced economic catastrophe in 1933—gold was fleeing the country, and banks were toppling like tenpins—his quick-thinking Treasury Secretary convinced FDR to take the country off the gold standard, recall all gold tender, and make ownership of it illegal. But wait: somebody forgot to tell the US Mint in Philadelphia, which stamped out thousands of brand-new 1933 $20 Double Eagles before finally getting the word just as the coins were about to be issued. Except for two placed on display at the Smithsonian, all Double Eagles were remelted into gold bars—supposedly. But in 1944, agents for Egypt’s King Farouk applied for—and, astonishingly, obtained—an export license for a ’33 Double Eagle, destined for the king’s prodigious coin collection. Hearing that Farouk paid more than $1,500 for his, coin dealers scattered across the US began running ads soliciting Double Eagles. A newspaper editor finally buzzed the Secret Service (first responders in counterfeit cases) and reminded them that the coin was not supposed to exist. For Agent Strang of the Secret Service, the game was afoot, and Tripp’s account of the tortuous recapture of all known “escaped” coins makes for exciting reading.

A true-life thriller—and, yes, there just might be more Double Eagles out there.