If you’re interested in the full story of the 1933 Double Eagle, I recommend Double Eagle: The Epic Story of the World’s Most Valuable Coin.
It is an exciting history of the chase for the few of these coins that escaped from the Mint.
Pedantic nit pick, but that should be ‘no legal 1933 Double Eagles’. Any $20 United States gold coin is called a double eagle.
I thought it was humorous. 
Good for you DrDeth! High five!
The government has had it in for this particular date since May of 1933. There was a functionary who took a particular interest in trying to chase down any possible specimens for outright confiscation and then this became the status quo. There are several ways the coinms could have left the mint legitimately from being exchanbged for other dates at the window to being inadvertantly sent out with 1932 issue. The mint prepares and tries the dies before the end of the year and it’s not unusual for these coins to end up in the coinage stream with “older” issues.
This case was then complicated by the mint’s promise that no more coins of this date would be allowed in public hands after they extracted $20 from the owner of the King Farouk specimen (not to mention half the value).
It’s very highly improbable that any of these coins were stolen, and yes, there probably more out there that will surface eventually. People couldn’t just walk in and steal gold coins or anything else. None of these were ever reported stolen by the government and all specimens were supposedly accounted for when the were melted per fiat.
I wonder if some conman has ever counterfeited one? It would be difficult for a potential buyer of one of these things to confirm provenance, I would think.
Moderator Note
Scumpup, let’s knock off the snark. Posts like these don’t exactly contribute to the discussion either. No warning issued.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I believe there is one in the Smithsonian.
In any case making good counterfeits without the original dies is difficult. Gold is the easiest to counterfeit and good ones exist but the technology to detect counterfeits stays ahead of the technology to make them; so far.
Most counterfeits can be detected without running tests and collectors usually buy only “certified” coins when spending more than a couple hundred dollars. These coins are scanned and graded by experts for easy pricing and an assurance of authenticity.
Yes, I think so too. I wanted to see what the significance of that part of the thread title was, and that was the reason why I was reading the thread.
Yeah, me too. I was trying to find out why some top-level-domain administrator was destroying coins.
It’s clear nobody has a real, documented answer concerning the policy and you will jump on me if I respond to the most recent posts in even the most dulcet of tones.
Post 11 & 13 explained it quite clearly.
Posts 11 and 13 are explanations that the posters surmise to be government motivations. Nothing in either post is drawn from any US Mint or FBI or Secret Service or other government agency source.
Still haven’t gotten to the bottom of “the .gov”, though! 
Referring to the federal government as “the .gov” is a joke nickname used from time to time on several other boards that I frequent. I used it here without considering that the joke would be so distracting that it would make it impossible for there to be any factual answer to my question. I apologize for that miscalculation.
If you really want to hear the answer from the horse’s mouth, why don’t you ask them?
Well let’s go to the quarry and throw some $#!+ down there!
What do you assume that I haven’t?
Because either:
- You asked them and got a satisfactory answer. In which case, why open the thread?
- You asked them and got no reply (most likely, IMHO) or an unsatisfactory answer. In which case, why do you think anyone else here would have better results?
Oh, I don’t know…perhaps I thought there might be an enthusiastic and knowledgeable numismatist here who might have some insight on the topic from the hobby. Coin collectors often know a great deal about more than just the actual coins. That seems not to be the case on this topic.