I started collecting coins in the 1970s, when gold was only $35 an ounce. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had banned gold ownership for American citizens in 1933 — Executive Order 6102 — a currency control that lasted more than 40 years, until 1974. When the ban lifted, coin collecting skyrocketed through the golden years of the 1970s and '80s, as gold climbed past $600 an ounce.
The most valuable American coin
The 1933 St. Gaudens $20 Double Eagle — struck the very year of the ownership ban — was never supposed to leave the Mint, but a few did. One recently sold for almost $20 million. The Mint struck 1.8 million of them; their survival rate is low, making the 1933 date among the rarest of all U.S. coins.
The rarer the coin, the more reason for a scoundrel to manufacture one.
What the chapter covers
- Counterfeits, altered dates, and added mintmarks
- The grading question — and what a slab does and doesn't guarantee
- Why provenance still matters on a certified coin
- The "Catch-22" of chasing rarity