Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle

 ( Book Product ) 

It is one of America's treasures — the most valuable ounce of gold in the world, the celebrated, the fabled, the infamous 1933 double eagle. It shouldn't even exist but it does, and its astonishing, true adventures read like "a composite of The Lord of the Rings and The Maltese Falcon" (The New York Times). Illegal to own and coveted all the more, it has been sought with passion by men of wealth and with steely persistence by the United States government for more

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Specifications

• Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle available on December 23 2014 from Amazon for 26.00
  
• ISBN bar code 9780743245746 ξ1 registered March 20 2016
  
• ISBN bar code 9780743245746 ξ2 registered March 01 2015
  
• ISBN bar code 9780743245746 ξ3 registered December 23 2014
  
• Product category is Illegal-Tender David-Tripp Book
• Manufacturered by Free Press
  

• Product weight is 1.32 lbs.
  

It is one of America's treasures — the most valuable ounce of gold in the world, the celebrated, the fabled, the infamous 1933 double eagle. It shouldn't even exist but it does, and its astonishing, true adventures read like "a composite of The Lord of the Rings and The Maltese Falcon" (The New York Times). Illegal to own and coveted all the more, it has been sought with passion by men of wealth and with steely persistence by the United States government for more than a half century. In 1905, at the height of the exuberant Gilded Age, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned America's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint- Gaudens — as he battled in vain for his life — to create what became America's most beautiful coin. In 1933 the hopes of America dimmed in the darkness of the Great Depression, and gold — the nation's lifeblood — hemorrhaged from the financial system. As the economy teetered on the brink of total collapse, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his first act as president, assumed wartime powers while the nation was at peace and in a "swift, staccato action" unprecedented in United States history recalled all gold and banned its private ownership. But the United States Mint continued, quite legally, to strike nearly a half million 1933 double eagles that were never issued and were deemed illegal to own. In 1937, along with countless millions of other gold coins, they were melted down into faceless gold bars and sent to Fort Knox. The government thought they had destroyed them all — but they were wrong. A few escaped, purloined in a crime — an inside job — that wasn't discovered until 1944. Then, the fugitive 1933 double eagles became the focus of a relentless Secret Service investigation spearheaded by the man who had put away Al Capone. All the coins that could be found were seized and destroyed. But one was beyond their reach, in a king's collection in Egypt, where it survived a

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References

^ Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle ISBN 9780743245746 (revised Jul 2025)
^ David TrippIllegal Tender : Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle by David Tripp (2004, Hardcover) ISBN 9780743245746 (revised Jul 2015)
^ David Tripp (2004). Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle, Free Press. Amazon. ISBN 9780743245746 (revised Dec 2014)