What is the most expensive gold coin in the world?
One of the world’s rarest and most sought after collector coins, the 1933 Double Eagle, was sold at Sotheby’s auction house in New York on Tuesday 30th July 2002 for the record sum of $7.59 million. The coin, featuring a standing Liberty on one side and an eagle on the other, was minted at the height of the Great Depression in 1933. However, it was not circulated because President Roosevelt abandoned the Gold Standard. After the abandonment, all 445,500 of the coins, which each had a face value of $20, were put into storage and demanded by Roosevelt to be melted down in 1937. It was not until the 1940s that it was discovered ten coins had not been returned. Nine coins were subsequently recovered but one coin got away and ended up in the collection of King Farouk of Egypt. It mysteriously disappeared again in the mid 1950s and resurfaced in 1996 when a UK coin dealer tried to sell it to undercover Secret Service agents in New York. After prolonged legal wrangling it was agreed that the
