Roman Veselý
At a Sothebys and Stacks auction in New York on July 30, 2002, a 1933 gold double eagle coin was sold for an incredible price of $7,590,000 US dollars. It was the only surviving specimen from that year. The entire mintage of that year was suspended and then melted down by order of President F. D. Roosevelt. It was decided that banks could no longer issue any gold coins, and this year was indeed the last year of gold coin minting.
This single specimen of the 1933 gold double eagle was exported to Egypt in 1944 for the legendary collection of King Farouk. It is almost certainly the same coin that was sold in the aforementioned auction. The auction was preceded by a five-year court case which determined that the coin was legally in private hands.
It is highly exceptional for a coin to have only one known specimen. Nevertheless, the price paid for this coin far exceeds the prices achieved for other unique pieces. At present, it is difficult to expect any auction of another coin to even come close to this price.
For comparison, we note that the record price paid for a single coin in Czech auctions so far was set in the 6th auction of the company Aurea Numismatika on December 7, 2002. This was a special auction of the collection of the prominent Czech numismatist Antonín Prokop, restituted from the National Museum. Two rare Imperial Russian coins were sold for the same price of 1,100,000 CZK. These were a new-made rouble of 1723 from the Moscow mint and a trial strike of 1 rouble of 1726 from the Saint Petersburg mint. Given that in May 2003, the company Aurea will auction the second part of the aforementioned collection, this Czech record could soon be broken.
