About 445,000 double eagle coins were minted in 1933 , but only one was ever legally released . King Farouk of Egypt contacted Nellie Tayloe Ross , then Director of the U.S. Mint , and requested one 1933 double eagle for his extensive coin collection . Since the 1933 coins were not circulated , she took one coin to the Smithsonian Institution and received documentation of its rarity . She then issued an export document allowing the Egyptian king to receive his coin . After the deaths of Farouk and the general who inherited the king 's collection , the coin disappeared into a European collector 's possession . It resurfaced when Stephen Fenton acquired it . When he tried to auction it off , both he and the auctioneer were arrested and the coin was seized . It was placed in the vault of the Secret Service in their office in the World Trade Center . While the provenance and paperwork proving ownership was debated '' ad nauseam '' in the courts , the coin was transferred to Fort Knox for further safekeeping . The World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed later that year . An agreement was reached between the U.S. Government and Stephen Fenton . The Fenton Farouk , as it came to be called , was sold at auction for $ 7.9 million in 2002 with a 10 % auctioneer 's premium and $ 20 to " monetize " the coin . Fenton and the government split the proceeds of the auction , with the provision that any further 1933 double eagles would be seized and not auctioned . In 2003 , a Philadelphia woman named Joan Switt Langbord found 10 1933 double eagles in a safe deposit box that once belonged to her parents ; when she took them to be appraised , they were seized by the United States Treasury as stolen property . Investigators claimed that Langbord 's father , Israel Switt , conspired with a clerk inside the mint to steal the coins . He had been investigated previously for the crime , leading to the confiscation of several gold pieces , but the statute of limitations had prevented him from being prosecuted . Langbord sued to have the coins returned to her , but in July 2011 , a federal jury ruled the stolen coins were property of the U.S. government
attacked and destroyed
September 11 attacks
Philadelphia Mint