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| Antiques |
Realm of the Coin
Dana Micucci
06/01/2004
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When Robert Lecce, a rare coin dealer in Boca Raton, Fla., began collecting
gold coins, he found the mystery and magic of the gold, the striking beauty of
the pieces and their colorful history fascinating. He eventually became so
obsessed that he spent more than 30 years tracking down a single $10 gold piece
that was once owned by a famous American collector.
 | | THE WORLD'S most valuable coin is the only surviving 1933 double eagle. It sold
for $7.6 million. |
His investment in time
and effort has paid off: He purchased the piece for an undisclosed amount in
1985; it is now worth about $2 million.
Gold coins have always fueled
fascination and fantasy. First minted in significant quantity by King Croesus of
Lydia around 550 B.C., these artifacts were redolent of royalty and tokens of
immortality. More recently, numismatists have discovered the pragmatic allure of
U.S. issues that circulated as legal tender only up to 1933. “There has been a
dramatic rise in demand,” says Harvey Stack of Stack’s Rare Coins, a New
York-based coin dealer and auctioneer. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
asked Americans to exchange their gold coins for paper currency, effectively
shoring up the wobbly U.S. Treasury during the Great Depression. While the
Treasury has issued modern gold coins since 1986, FDR’s policies established a
permanent limit on the supply of this earlier vintage, and as more collectors
have entered the market in recent years, values are escalating, Stack
explains.
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