1933 Double Eagle

The 1933 Double Eagle is a $20 gold coin and one of the rarest and most valuable U.S. coins. Although 445,500 were made, the U.S. Mint planned to melt down all but 2 of them, but some were stolen (not to the mint's knowledge). 20 stolen coins have been recovered. The two coins that were not meant to be melten are in the National Numistatic Collection. Ten are held in Fort Knox, while one is in a private collection. It was sold in 2007 for $7.59 million (the second highest auction coin price in history).

Some of these coins circulated around collectors for a few years until the Secret Service became aware of them. They began an investigation to retrieve and destroy them in March 1944. During the fist year of the investigation seven coins were found and destroyed at the mint. The following year an eighth coin was destroyed. They caught the theif, Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt, who admitted to selling the nine found coins to collectors, but claimed he couldn't remember where he got them.

Egyptian Double Eagle
Prior to the investigation, a Texas dealer sold one of the coins to a foreign country. In 1952, a tenth double eagle was recovered and also destroyed at the mint. The missing double eagle, sold by the Texas dealer was acquired by King Farouk of Egypt, who was a collector of many things. In adherence with the law, his ministers applied to the United States Treasury Department for an export license for the coin. Coincidently, license was granted just days before the mint theft was discovered the. In 1952, King Farouk was deposed in a coup d'etat, and many of his possessions were made available for public auction, including the double eagle coin. The United States government requested the return of the coin, and the Egyptian government said that it would comply with the request. However, at that time the coin disappeared and was not seen again in Egypt. n 1996, a double eagle surfaced again after over forty years of obscurity, when British coin dealer Stephen Fenton was arrested by U.S. Secret Service agents during a sting operation at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Although he initially told investigators he bought the coin over the counter at his shop, he later changed his story. Under sworn testimony, he insisted the double eagle had come from the collection of King Farouk, though this could not be verified. When the coin was seized, it was transferred to the treasury vaults of the World Trade Center. When the court settlement was reached in July 2001, only two months before the trade center was destroyed, the coin was transferred to Fort Knox for safekeeping.

In August 2005, the U.S. Mint announced that 10 more stolen 1933 double eagles were retrieved from the family of Israel Switt.