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Family fights government over rare ‘Double Eagle’ gold coins
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/family-fights-government-over-rare-double-eagle-gold-151853030.html ^

Posted on 07/07/2011 5:00:53 PM PDT by Orange1998

A jeweler's heirs are fighting the United States government for the right to keep a batch of rare and valuable "Double Eagle" $20 coins that date back to the Franklin Roosevelt administration. It's just the latest coin controversy to make headlines.

Philadelphian Joan Langbord and her sons say they found the 10 coins in 2003 in a bank deposit box kept by Langbord's father, Israel Switt, a jeweler who died in 1990. But when they tried to have the haul authenticated by the U.S. Treasury, the feds, um, flipped.

They said the coins were stolen from the U.S. Mint back in 1933, and are the government's property. The Treasury Department seized the coins, and locked them away at Fort Knox. The court battle is set to kick off this week.

The rare coins (pictured), first struck in 1850, show a flying eagle on one side and a figure representing liberty on the other. One such coin recently sold at auction for $7.6 million, meaning the Langbords' trove could be worth as much as $80 million.

The coins are part of a batch that were struck but then melted down after President Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard in 1933, during the Great Depression. Two were given to the Smithsonian Institution*, but a few more mysteriously escaped.

The government has long believed that Switt schemed with a corrupt cashier at the Mint to swipe the coins. They note that the deposit box in which the coins were found was rented six years after Switt's death, and that the family never paid inheritance tax on the coins.

A lawyer for the Langbords counters that the coins could have left the Mint legally since it was permissible to swap gold coins for gold bullion.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Government
KEYWORDS: coins; fictionalpast; gold; goldbug; rare
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Govt claims family never paid inheritance tax on the coins. So the Govt wants inheritance tax and confiscated the coins? Wow.
1 posted on 07/07/2011 5:01:01 PM PDT by Orange1998
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To: Orange1998

Putting gold in front of the US Treasury is like putting raw steak in front of a hungry dog.


2 posted on 07/07/2011 5:03:04 PM PDT by PGR88 (I'm so open-minded my brains fell out)
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To: Orange1998
Brutal.

Doesn't sound like due process was served... I guess that's what happens when nothing is certain, but death and taxes.

Hopefully the family gets something out of this except a punch in the face.

3 posted on 07/07/2011 5:05:12 PM PDT by Trajan88 (www.bullittclub.com)
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To: Orange1998

This is the kind of ‘change’ Obama was talking about....soon he will be rifling around in everyone’s couches and old hand bags....lol.


4 posted on 07/07/2011 5:05:52 PM PDT by penelopesire (Let The Congressional Hearings Begin!)
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To: Orange1998

Watch them end up in Mr. Soros’ safe deposit box.


5 posted on 07/07/2011 5:06:55 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (I'll raise $2million for Gov. Sarah Palin. What'll you do?)
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To: Orange1998

That’s obvious..


6 posted on 07/07/2011 5:07:03 PM PDT by ken5050 (Save the earth..it's the ONLY planet with CHOCOLATE!!!)
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To: Orange1998
Wait! It's even better than that.....Gov't wants inheritance tax on coins they confiscated because they claim they were stolen.

This reminds me of a guy I went to high school with. He embarked on a little illegal import business that was very lucrative. When the Feds caught up with him he had a very nice home, boats, cars, all the goodies. They confiscated everything and sent him to club Fed and when he got out, they handed him a bill from the IRS that exceeded 125k. They "estimated" his earnings and figured how much he should have paid in income tax. Last I heard, he was still paying an attorney to sort through it. Crime doesn't pay (unless you're the IRS).

7 posted on 07/07/2011 5:12:14 PM PDT by liberalh8ter
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To: Orange1998

Look you have no property rights. You never did. The government can take what it wants and you have to take it. Nothing new here. Time to move on.


8 posted on 07/07/2011 5:17:45 PM PDT by ColdSteelTalon (Light is fading to shadow, and casting its shroud over all we have known...)
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To: Orange1998
The retired father of a friend of mine spent a lot of time roaming his neighborhood with his metal detector. One day he discovered a bag of double eagles in a neighbor's backyard that were probably hidden there when FDR outlawed gold.

He's waiting for the neighbor to move so he can buy the house and pretend he just discovered them.

9 posted on 07/07/2011 5:23:24 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum ("A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." - Bertrand de Jouvenel des Ursins)
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To: PGR88

“Give what back?”


10 posted on 07/07/2011 5:24:45 PM PDT by Christian Engineer Mass (25ish Cambridge MA grad student. Many conservative Christians my age out there? __ Click my name)
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To: Orange1998

If the gubmint winds up with these coins and keeps them, they would be worth no more than, quite literally, their weight in gold.

If the gubmint left them in the hands of Ms Langbord they would be sold, taxes could be collected each time they were sold thereafter.

So the bully could make a few hundred right now, or millions into the future.


11 posted on 07/07/2011 5:26:44 PM PDT by RobinOfKingston (The instinct toward liberalism is located in the part of the brain called the rectal lobe.)
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To: ColdSteelTalon
You have no property rights with regard to stolen property. And you will never.

A court will have to sort this out.

12 posted on 07/07/2011 5:27:37 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy

Was it truly stolen? I am not sure I believe the government.


13 posted on 07/07/2011 5:32:03 PM PDT by ColdSteelTalon (Light is fading to shadow, and casting its shroud over all we have known...)
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To: ColdSteelTalon

All we know is that the government alleges the coins are stolen, and the lawyer for the Langfords will argue that they were not. The legal standard will be “by a preponderance of the evidence” (not “beyond a reasonable doubt”).


14 posted on 07/07/2011 5:35:54 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: Orange1998

Ok, so you’re stupid enough to ask the gov’t to do the authentication.....
I.Q. = 80

How dumb do you have to be to give them ALL OF THEM?????
I.Q. = 5


15 posted on 07/07/2011 5:37:57 PM PDT by G Larry (I dream of a day when a man is judged by the content of his character)
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To: ColdSteelTalon
Look you have no property rights. You never did.

You're right on the first point. We have no property rights. Once upon a time, though, we did. We let them go.

16 posted on 07/07/2011 5:43:17 PM PDT by BfloGuy (Money, like chocolate on a hot oven, was melting in the pockets of the people. -- L. Von Mises)
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To: ColdSteelTalon

“Look you have no property rights.”

If only they had kept the original wording of the Declaration of Independence: “...life, liberty, and the pursuit of property...”

We need a constitutional amendment limiting the government’s power to confiscate property.


17 posted on 07/07/2011 5:45:26 PM PDT by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: Orange1998

But think for a minute how dumb the US Treasury is.

If the US wins this, they get to keep 10 1-oz coins that have a bullion value to them of $15,000.

If they let the people keep the coins and sell them, they get to collect millions of $ in inheritance taxes on them.

DUMB and DUMBER


18 posted on 07/07/2011 5:51:19 PM PDT by Elpasser
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To: Orange1998
For those who care, the fact is that the 1933 Double Eagle was never issued into circulation. There was no legal way for any private individual to secure any of them. That they are stolen from the government is beyond dispute. The problem now is that the thief is undoubtedly dead, while others have been enriched with the thief's unlawful gains. So how do you see justice served?
19 posted on 07/07/2011 6:07:39 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: Orange1998

Since when is the government in the coin authentication business? There are private coin grading/authentication agencies that perform this function.


20 posted on 07/07/2011 6:09:33 PM PDT by oblomov
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