What probably made FDRs stunt so popular, is he gave his buddies forewarning. So, they cleaned out their accounts and sent their gold overseas for safekeeping. Then, FDR confiscates coinage gold from the public and then re-values the official price from $20 to $35, thus netting a hefty 60 per cent profit overnight. Even today, virtually all “new stock” old US gold coins for sale to collectors come from european vaults, apparently.
$20 to $35 is a 75% profit.