"For years one coin, a 1933 twenty-dollar Double Eagle, has inspired the passions of thieves and collectors, government agents and charlatans. Its extraordinary story spans seventy years and three continents, linking an almost unbelievable cast of characters: Theodore Roosevelt and a Philadelphia gold dealer with underworld connections; Egypt's King Farouk and an apple-cheeked Secret Service agent; London's most successful coin dealer and a retired trucker from Amarillo, Texas."
"The greatest sculptor of his day, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, designed the Double Eagle at the behest of Theodore Roosevelt to serve as a gorgeous symbol of American power in an imperial age. When the United States, in the depths of the Great Depression, stopped coining gold in 1933, one man at the Philadelphia mint saw an opportunity. His theft of the last American gold coin - the 1933 Double Eagle - inspired a government vendetta that lasted into the next century." "But even the auction that established the coin as the most valuable in the world (it sold for a record-setting $7 million in 2002) was not the final chapter in the story of the Double Eagle. There was another big surprise in store, as we learn in the epilogue to this book."--Jacket.
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