Figure of the month: US$7.59 million

In 1933, 445,000 American Double Eagle gold coins were produced at the Philadelphia Mint Facility – with a face value of US$20, an adequate price at the time. However, one of these very coins sold for US$7.59 million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2002, thus rendering it the most expensive gold coin of all time to date. What happened to cause this fabulous increase in value? With a mintage of just under half a million, it was clearly a mass-produced item – or was it? 

Executive Order 6102 and the missing gold coins

Even before the gold coins designed by Irish artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens could be put into circulation, Executive Order 6102 came into force. Introduced in response to the prevailing banking crisis by then-US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it imposed a partial ban on gold. The law resulted, among other things, in the meltdown of the entire mintage of the 1933 American Double Eagle coin. However, despite the order, some of the coins remained intact: apart from two copies the mint kept as specimens, at least 20 more of the gold coins simply disappeared. All efforts by the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of today’s CIA, to recover the lost coins were unsuccessful – until the aforementioned auction in 2002. Incidentally, the seller of the only 1933 American Double Eagle gold coin that has surfaced to date had to split the profit made at the auction with the US Treasury.

The exception that proves the rule

Anyone considering the purchase of gold coins in the hope of future appreciation should bear in mind that only very few actually do become significantly more valuable. In the case of the 1933 American Double Eagle, it was primarily the extreme rarity of the coin after almost all copies had been melted down that led to its enormous increase in value. Gold coins generally become more valuable only through price increases in their gold content. The latter must be at least 90 per cent for coins to be officially considered investment gold. And this price increase will first be offset by the significantly higher premium on purchase compared to gold bars – and, of course, even more so compared to gold-backed ETCs.