Of the three, the 1933 “Double Eagle” stole the show, becoming the world’s most valuable coin by selling for a whopping $18.9 million.
As Owen Edwards reported for Smithsonian magazine in 2008, the sculptor based the figure of Liberty on Harriette Eugenia Anderson, a well-known model of African American descent from South Carolina.
In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt moved the country off the gold standard in hopes of bolstering an economy ravaged by the Great Depression.
Treasury and the coin’s previous owner, the record-breaking Double Eagle is the only of its kind that a private person can lawfully own, notes Oscar Holland for CNN.
Outside of the Double Eagle, the Sotheby’s sale also sought to make stamp collecting history.
Carrying an estimate of $10 to $15 million, the 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta sold for the still-hefty figure of $8.3 million.
Most collectors assumed that the one-off stamps were lost to time, but in 1873, Vernon Vaughan, a 12-year-old Scottish boy and budding stamp enthusiast, discovered a specimen among his uncle’s papers.
Also on Tuesday, American billionaire and philanthropist David Rubenstein made the winning bid for a 1918 24-cent “Inverted Jenny” plate block, a quartet of misprinted U.S.
Rubenstein purchased the “Jennies” for $4.86 million—just under its estimate of $5 to $7 million.
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