Posted on 08/25/2005 9:52:28 AM PDT by LibWhacker
We're from the Government and we're here to help you!
The value of these particular coins is not the gold, it is that there are very few of this year/type of coin in existance. It is the value to collectors not the value of the gold.
BTW. Other than the value that people "attribute" to an item, what value does it really have?
Rare gold coins? The Mona Lisa? Season tickets for the Red Sox?
If people don't attribute value to items, they have no value at all.
Please add me to the ping list.
I'd storm Ft. Knox and take my stuff back. Well, at least I'd try.
$7.5 million x 10 ... I can't even do the math. Imagine the headache she must have!
Not at all. There is an absolutely brilliant book, Illegal Tender that reconstructs the events surrounding these coins. There is no doubt whatsoever that they were stolen. It does not matter who they were stolen from, it is tenet of American Law inherited from the English Common Law that title to stolen property cannot be perfected. That means that ownership of stolen property remains with the person from whom it was stolen. This is why people are getting works of art back (or compensation in lieu of) that were looted by the Nazis. I learned this lesson when I bought some currency on eBay from a pawnshop in Florida that turned out to have been stolen from a dealer in North Carolina. I had to send it back to him and eat the loss myself.
Ditto.
If I'm willing to pay you $1 million for your ounce of gold, then its value is $1 million - and that's neither mythical nor magical...
Contacting the US Mint when you've found rare coins is about as intelligent as contacting the BATFE or LEO's when you've found a gun.
Puts me in mind of a news story I read many years ago about a man who discovered that he had purchased an entire sheet of stamps that contained a major printing error. He immediately announced his discovery to the local newspaper. Within a month the government commenced to print millions of the stamps with the error deliberately duplicated in order to destroy the value of those they had distributed by mistake.
Another anecdote: I knew a man who owned a coin shop back in the mid-60's. He was approached by a mint employee (San Francisco mint) who offered to provide as many mint error coins as he could sell in exchange for a cut of the profits. The coin dealer almost took him up on it but the mint employee was arrested and that ended the deal.
Another anecdote: In the early 60's a large cache of uncirculated silver dollars bearing the New Orleans mint mark were discovered in the vaults of the US mint (I was told at Philadelphia). A coin dealer with whom I was acquainted cut a deal with a couple of mint employees to release several hundred of these to him a month prior to the announcement of the discovery. These particular silver dollars were valued at hundreds or ever thousands of dollars each in uncirculated condition (it had been assumed that most of the mintages had been melted by the mint and only a few had gotten into general circulation). The dealer sold his coins to other dealers at a discount and made a ton of money. The mint then announced the discovery of the dollars and released them into circulation which, of course, knocked the bottom out of the market for the formerly "rare" coins. The dealer had to go into hiding for a while. Don't know what happened the the mint employee(s).
Perhaps some would like to think stolen property is no longer stolen property if it passes through enough hands and/or outlasts some statute of limitations. Or, maybe it's because these coins are rare and therefore worth a lot. Maybe it's because they originally belonged to the (evil) government.
Very strange.
As an aside, please note that all this article really states is that the attorney representing Langbord claims that the Mint cannot "prove" the coins are stolen. Well, that's for the court to decide. The knee-jerk reactions on this thread are astounding.
Ah, seems that's been around for awhile.
The value of anything depends upon what someone is willing to pay for it. Gold is a commodity, technically so are those Federal Reserve Notes in your pocket. You can buy, sell and speculate on the future value of them. So it does have value, at this time it $437.80 but the spot market closes in two minutes.
Huh? $440 an oz. That's not mythical it's pretty real.
Also, my understanding about the sale a couple of years ago of the 1933 double eagle was that it fetched almost 8 million $ because it was one of a kind. The discovery of 10 more cannot be good news to whoever purchased it. And the article makes it sound as if there might be more of them out there somewhere.
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