Description
Free Press, Published 2004. Hardcover, xvii, 363 pp.; 24 cm; First Edition (with full number line); illustrated with black-and-white photographs.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
111
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In very good condition with a very good dust jacket. Tan speckled paper-covered boards with pink paper spine and gold lettering on spine, light bumping to edges and mild surface wear, binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket with Saint-Gaudens double eagle design shows a few small nicks, light creasing along edges, and minor shelf wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. History of the 1933 double eagle, the twenty-dollar gold piece commissioned from Augustus Saint-Gaudens by Theodore Roosevelt, struck in 1933 but never issued after FDR took the nation off gold. Nearly half a million were melted; a handful escaped through the Philadelphia Mint's cashier, sparking a decades-long Secret Service investigation. One coin reached King Farouk of Egypt, vanished after his overthrow, resurfaced in a 1996 sting at the Waldorf-Astoria, and after years of litigation sold at Sotheby's in July 2002 for more than 7.5 million dollars, then a world record for any coin. Tripp, former director of Sotheby's coin department, served as consultant on that sale. With notes, selected bibliography, and index. Contents: Prologue; Part I, Life and Death: The Artist, the President, and the S.O.A.B.; Swift and Staccato Action, The Great Depression; Gold Rush in Reverse; Just a Factory, Making Money; The Great Melt and the Great Escape; Part II, On the Law: A Double Eagle Flies to Cairo; A Routine Inquiry; Assistance, Resistance, and Stalemate; The Crooked Cashier; Working the List; Wondering about Woodin; The Red-Headed Philadelphia Sucker and the Deacon; Grounds for Recovery; A Clumsy Liar; Seizures, Suits, and Surrender; A Modern Day Aladdin's Cave, The Coin Escapes Again; Part III, Legitimacy: A Double Eagle Reappears; The Homecoming Deal; Put 'Em Up; In Rem; Auction and Absolute Anonymity; Epilogue, The 1933 Yeti; Author's Note; Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index.