COIN UPDATE

The latest news, new releases and discoveries

The ‘fabled and elusive’ 1933 Double Eagle Coin is to be sold by current owner Stuart Weitzman, in a high profile Sotheby’s auction featuring just three treasures from the entrepreneur’s collection.

The ‘Three Treasures – Collected by Stuart Weitzman’ live auction will take place at Sotheby’s New York on 8 June 2021, and will feature just three incredibly rare items:

• The ‘fabled and elusive’ 1933 Double Eagle Coin

• The sole-surviving example of the British Guiana Onecent Magenta, known as the most famous and valuable stamp in the world;

• The Inverted Jenny Plate Block, the most well-known and sought-after American stamp rarity

The Double Eagle coin and the British Guiana stamp will be offered with estimates of $10/15 million each and are poised to set new world auction records in their respective categories. The Inverted Jenny will carry an estimate of $5/7 million, set to eclipse its own record for an American philatelic item.

Richard Austin, Sotheby’s Global Head of Books & Manuscripts, said: ‘As the most aspirational objects in their respective collecting fields and each with their own illustrious provenance, the Double Eagle, the British Guiana and the Inverted Jenny all hold an indelible place in history, and in our collective imagination.

‘Each treasure is unique in its own right: the 1933 Double Eagle as the only legally owned example, the British Guiana as the only one known, and the Inverted Jenny as the only plate block from a unique sheet of stamps. It would be a true privilege to present just one of these sought-after rarities at auction but offering all three one-of-a-kind treasures together in the same sale is a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.’

Stuart Weitzman pioneered luxury shoe design as founder of his eponymous company and is renowned for creating ‘high-end shoes’.beyond his highly successful career in fashion, Weitzman is a lifelong philatelist and numismatist with a deep appreciation for one-of-a-kind objects. Growing up collecting stamps and coins at an early age in Queens, New York, he fulfilled his boyhood pursuits at the highest echelon with his acquisition of the Double Eagle in 2002 and the British Guiana and Inverted Jenny Plate Block in 2014.

All of the seller’s proceeds will benefit charitable ventures, including The Weitzman Family Foundation, which supports medical research and higher education such as the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Other major Foundation projects include a museum in Madrid, the first of its kind, devoted to Spanish Judaica.

Weitzman said: ‘I had a life-long dream of collecting the single greatest rarities in the two great collecting areas of stamps and coins and then placing these extraordinary treasures, hidden away for decades, on continuous public view. I determined to do that, and I did that. That was my dream. Today my dream is to leave a legacy of charitable works to which the proceeds from the sales of these treasures will go.’

more than eighty years. It is America’s last gold coin struck for circulation, ending a tradition begun in 1795. Known as the coin that took the US off the Gold Standard, 1933 Double Eagles were the last American gold coins struck and intended for circulation by the United States Mint but were never legally issued for use. Designed by the renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-gaudens at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, its imagery of Liberty striding forward on the obverse, with an American eagle in flight on the reverse marks the apex of United States coin design. In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard in an effort to lift America’s tattered economy out of the Great Depression. Never officially issued for use, all 1933 Double Eagle coins were ordered to be destroyed with exception of two examples set aside for the Smithsonian Institution. In 1937, several 1933 Double Eagles appeared on the market, which led to a Secret Service investigation in 1944 that deemed all newly discovered coins were stolen from the United States government and therefore illegal to own.

However, only weeks before the Secret Service investigation began in 1944, one of the 1933 Double Eagles was purchased and erroneously granted an export license. It entered the famed coin collection of King Farouk where it remained until 1954 when his collection was offered at auction by Sotheby’s, acting on behalf of the new Republic of Egypt. Upon learning of its presence in the sale, the United States Treasury successfully requested that the coin be withdrawn and the whereabouts

of the coin remained a mystery until 1996 when it was seized during a Secret Service sting at the Waldorf-astoria in New York.

Following a five-year legal battle, which unearthed the long-forgotten and erroneously issued export license, the case was settled, and this single 1933 Double Eagle was permitted to be privately owned.

In 2005, ten more 1933 Double Eagles surfaced in the possession of the family of one of the individuals investigated in the 1944 Secret Service investigation and another legal battle ensued. More than a decade later, after a jury trial and appeals (to as high as the Supreme Court), 1933

Double Eagles were ruled property of the United States and therefore, with the exception of Stuart Weitzman’s example, can never be sold (following the litigation another 1933 Double Eagle was voluntarily surrendered to the US government).