Per Rare Coin Wholesalers, nearly 500,000 $20 coins were minted by the United States government in 1933 before Franklin Roosevelt’s recall came into effect. Most were consigned to the melting pot, with exceptions made for two coins given over to the Smithsonian in 1934. For any that escaped the fire, the official stance of the government was and remains that this mintage was never circulated, making possession of these coins illegal.
And yet, in 1944 (per the U.S. Mint), it was discovered that 10 of the 1933 $20 coins were on the loose, one of them having even been given formal clearance to leave the U.S. and enter the personal coin collection of King Farouk of Egypt. The nine coins still on U.S. soil were seized or surrendered, but the Farouk coin remained in his hands until his deposition. It, along with many of his other valuables, were put up for auction by the Republic of Egypt in 1954. The U.S. government asked that the Farouk coin be taken off the market, and the new Egyptian government complied, but the whereabouts of the coin afterwards was long a mystery.
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When the U.S. government put a surviving 1933 $20 coin up for auction itself in 2002, it was widely assumed that it was the same Farouk coin. It had been seized from an attempted illegal sale at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1996. Special arrangements were made to let it be sold into private hands and, per the Chicago Tribune, it sold for nearly $7.6 million.
