Sotheby's on Friday began displaying a 1933 Double Eagle US$20 gold coin, the only one the US will permit to be privately owned. The auction house said the Double Eagle could fetch as much as US$6 million, a record for a single coin, when it is auctioned July 30.
The record auction price for a coin is just over US$4.1 million, paid in August 1999 for an 1804 US silver dollar also often described as the numismatic equivalent of the famed Leonardo da Vinci portrait.
Sotheby's is auctioning its Double Eagle, which is 90 percent gold and 10 percent copper, with Stack's Rare Coins, another auction house.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The 1933 Double Eagle up for sale followed a long and winding road from its minting to the auction block.
The US$20 gold coin was first minted in 1850. It became known as the "Double Eagle" because the US$10 coin that was already being minted was known as the "Single Eagle," Fore said.
The Mint struck thousands of Double Eagles early in 1933. They never became official coinage because Theodore Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin, by then the president, took the US off the gold standard, to help the Depression-ridden economy.
The Mint melted down most of the 1933 Double Eagles, reserving two for the Smithsonian Institution. But 10 escaped into the black market. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Mint retrieved and destroyed nine of these. Sotheby's believes the 10th coin, the one it says it is auctioning, found its way to the Royal Legation of Egypt.
This governmental entity in 1944 asked the US Treasury Department for a license to export the coin to Egypt's King Farouk, an avid coin collector. Not realizing the coin's significance, the department granted the license.
For 50 years, the coin vanished. But in 1995 British coin dealer Stephen Fenton bought it, and in Feb. 1996 tried to sell it at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to US Secret Service agents posing as coin collectors. The coin was seized. Litigation dragged on until January 2001, when the coin was moved from 7 World Trade Center to Mint depositories. Sotheby's took delivery of the coin on Tuesday.
The Double Eagle being auctioned has suffered slight wear over the years, but is considered in or near "gem brilliant uncirculated" condition, a very high quality, Sotheby's said.
Objects often rise in value when they are produced or released in error.
Ryanair, Transavia, Volotea and other low-cost airlines are feeling the financial pain from high jet fuel prices as a result of the Middle East war and are cutting flights. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has taken a huge chunk of oil supplies off the market, sending the price of jet fuel soaring and triggering fears of shortages that could force airlines to cancel flights. Airlines are not waiting for a lack of supplies to react. “Travel alert: Airlines are cutting thousands of flights right now,” Travel Therapy host Karen Schaler said in an Instagram reel this past weekend.
MANAGING RISKS: Taiwan has secured LNG sufficient to cover 95 percent of electricity demand for next month, UBS said, describing the government’s approach as proactive UBS Group AG has raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 8 percent, up from 6.9 percent previously, and said expansion could reach as high as 8.6 percent if external energy shocks are avoided. The upgrade reflects a stronger-than-expected first-quarter performance and sustained momentum in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven exports, which UBS said are providing a firm foundation for growth despite geopolitical and energy risks. Taiwan’s GDP expanded 13.69 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, the fastest growth since the second quarter of 1987, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported on Thursday. On a seasonally
The Fair Trade Commission’s (FTC) ongoing review of Grab Holdings Ltd’s US$600 million acquisition of Foodpanda Taiwan’s operations, announced on March 23, has taken on fresh urgency as industry experts warn that the transaction could embed significant Chinese cybersecurity vulnerabilities into Taiwan’s digital infrastructure through Grab’s deep ties to autonomous-driving firm WeRide (文遠知行). Less than 16 months after the FTC blocked Uber Eats’ direct attempt to acquire Foodpanda Taiwan — citing potential combined market shares of 80 to 90 percent — the emergence of Grab as the buyer has prompted questions about whether the same competitive harm is simply being rerouted
The list of Asian stocks that benefit from business partnership with Nvidia Corp is getting longer, as the region further integrates into the artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant’s business ecosystem. Just in the past week, South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, Taiwan’s Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), as well as China’s Huizhou Desay SV Automotive Co (德賽西威) and Pateo Connect Technology Shanghai Corp (博泰車聯) have become the latest to rally on news of tie-ups, supply-chain participation or product collaboration with the US chip designer. Asian suppliers account for about 90 percent of Nvidia’s production costs, up from about 65 percent last year, data compiled
RSS