Three rarities from the collection of fashion designer Stuart Weitzman will be offered in a dedicated live auction, Three Treasures, Collected by Stuart Weitzman, at Sotheby’s in New York on 8 June 2021. The sale brings together a coin and two stamps, each a leading object in its collecting field, with a combined low estimate of $25 million.
The 1933 Double Eagle, a twenty-dollar gold coin, and the British Guiana One-Cent Magenta, the sole surviving example of its kind, each carry an estimate of $10 million to $15 million. The 1918 24-Cent Inverted Jenny Plate Block, the most recognised error in United States stamp collecting, is estimated at $5 million to $7 million. The three will be on public view in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries during New York Asia Week, from 11 to 17 March, with further viewings in May and in early June.
The 1933 Double Eagle is the only example that may be legally owned by an individual. When Weitzman bought it at Sotheby’s in 2002 for $7.59 million, it set a world auction record for any coin. Designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt, it was America’s last gold coin struck for circulation. Nearly all 1933 Double Eagles were ordered destroyed, and after a long legal history this single example was permitted into private hands.
No stamp is rarer than the British Guiana One-Cent Magenta, a penny issue from 1856. On each of the four occasions it has sold at auction it has set a record for a single stamp, last selling to Weitzman in 2014 for $9.48 million. Rediscovered by a 12-year-old schoolboy in 1873, it passed through some of the most important collections ever assembled, including that of Count Philippe la Renotière von Ferrary.
The Inverted Jenny Plate Block comes from the only sheet of 100 stamps printed with the Curtiss JN-4 biplane upside down, the result of a 1918 printing error. The block last appeared on the market 16 years earlier, selling for $2.97 million before Weitzman acquired it privately in 2014.
Weitzman began collecting stamps and coins as a child in Queens, New York. Sotheby’s said all of the seller’s proceeds will benefit charitable ventures, including the Weitzman Family Foundation, which supports medical research and higher education.
(Press Release)
