Posted on 08/25/2005 9:52:28 AM PDT by LibWhacker
PHILADELPHIA - The U.S. Mint seized 10 Double Eagle gold coins from 1933, among the rarest and most valuable coins in the world, that were turned in by a jeweler seeking to determine their authenticity.
Joan S. Langbord plans a federal court lawsuit to try to recover them, her attorney, Barry H. Berke, said Wednesday. Langbord found the coins among the possessions of her father, longtime Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt, who had acknowledged having sold some of the coins decades ago. She now operates her father's business.
David Lebryk, acting director of the Mint, had announced in a news release that the rare coins, which were never put in circulation, had been taken from the Mint "in an unlawful manner" in the mid-1930's and now were "recovered."
The coins, which are so rare that their value is almost beyond calculation, are public property, he said.
But Berke said Mint officials couldn't prove the coins had been stolen, or were subject to forfeiture.
In 2002, Sotheby's and numismatic firm Stack's auctioned off a 1933 Double Eagle coin for $7.59 million, the highest price ever paid for a coin. That Double Eagle, which is believed to have been part of a collection belonging to King Farouk of Egypt, surfaced when a coin dealer tried selling it to undercover Secret Service agents.
After a legal battle, the dealer was permitted to sell the coin at auction on the condition he split the proceeds with the Mint.
In its statement, the Mint said officials were still deciding what they would do with the seized coins, which are being held at Fort Knox. They said they had no plans to auction them but would consider saving "these historical artifacts" for public exhibits. Other double eagle coins seized in the past were melted down.
Double Eagles were first minted in 1850 with a face value of $20. The 445,500 coins minted in 1933 were never put into circulation because the nation went off the gold standard. All the coins were ordered melted down, but a handful are believed to have survived, including two handed over to the Smithsonian Institution.
Langbord declined to discuss how the coins might have come into the possession of her father, who operated an antiques and jewelry shop for 70 years and died in 1990 at 95.
The Mint contends Switt obtained a cache of the gold coins from his connections at the Mint just before they were to be reduced to bullion in 1937.
Switt admitted in 1944 that he had sold nine Double Eagle coins, but he was not charged in connection with those transactions, according to the Mint.
The family attorney said the coins were found recently, and Langbord and her son, Roy, notified the Mint of the discovery in September. Mint officials asked to authenticate the coins, then confiscated them after doing so, Berke said.
He contended Langbord and her son never relinquished their right to the coins.
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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