A 1933 Double Eagle gold coin on Tuesday sold for a record-setting US$18.9 million at auction in New York, and the world’s rarest stamp went for US$8.3 million.
The coin, the only 1933 Double Eagle ever allowed to be privately owned, was expected to sell for between US$10 million and US$15 million at the Sotheby’s auction.
It was sold by shoe designer and collector Stuart Weitzman, who acquired it in 2002 for what was then a world record price of US$7.6 million.
Photo: AFP
The coin, with a face value of US$20 and a distinctive design of an American eagle in flight on one side and Liberty striding forward on the other, was the last gold coin struck for circulation in the US.
However, it was never issued after former US president Franklin Roosevelt took the US off the gold standard and all copies were ordered destroyed.
Weitzman on Tuesday also sold a British Guiana One-Cent Magenta stamp, issued in 1856, for US$8.3 million, confirming its place as the most valuable stamp in history.
The stamp is the only surviving one from a series that was printed by the South American nation because of a shortage of stamps sent by its then-British colonial rulers.
The designer had bought it in 2014 for US$9.5 million and continued a tradition started by previous owners by adding his own flourish — a line drawing of a stiletto shoe and his initials — to the back of the stamp.
The buyers of the two items wished to remain anonymous, Sotheby’s said.
In addition, a plate block of the 24Cent Inverted Jenny stamp, which was issued in 1918 for the first US Air Mail letters, sold for US$4.9 million. It is the most valuable US stamp.
The Inverted Jenny, which was last sold at auction about 26 years ago for US$2.9 million, is a collector’s item because of a printing error in which its biplane design appears upside down.
Sotheby’s said the stamp block, which sold below its pre-auction estimate, was bought by David Rubenstein, a cofounder of private equity company The Carlyle Group.
Weitzman, who has been collecting stamps and coins since he was a boy, has said that he would use the money from Tuesday’s sale to fund his charitable ventures, including medical research, his design school and a Jewish museum in Madrid.
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